Elsevier and the National University of Singapore Announce Winners of 24-Hour Hackathon

AMSTERDAM, August 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and the National University of Singapore (NUS), a leading global university centered in Asia, announced the winners of SgCodeJam24. This "Hackathon", a 24-hour programming competition, encourages students and faculty to develop customized applications that advance the search and discovery process of scientific information.

From August 12-13, NUS and Elsevier hosted SgCodeJam24 at NUS School of Computing (SoC). Students and faculty participated in the competition to develop applications using SciVerse ScienceDirect Content and Framework APIs. The winning applications include:

First place: Zhao Shanheng and Zhong Zhi, of NUS, developed the iRank Apps, an application ranking universities by different, configurable variables allowing you to find experts within top search results.

Second place: Pham Ben and Nguyen Kristin, of the Nanyang Technological University, developed the SciVey - SciVerse Survey, a notepad-style Sciverse application that allows for tracking and editing selected parts of an article while reading it.

Third place (shared): Heyrani-Nobari Ghasem, Oliya Mohammad and Heyrani-Nobari Sadegh, of NUS, developed the Read Later, an application designed to quickly save search results of interest, to read later. This team was also awarded the Audience Choice Prize.

Third place (shared): Ming Zhaoyan and Lin Jovian, of NUS, developed the WordTrend and Topic Trend application designed to present a numerical analysis of the trends within the search results by word and topic.

"SgCodeJam24 sparked innovative ideas among students and faculty," said Associate Professor Kan Min-Yen, the key member from NUS SoC in the event organizing committee. "Furthermore, it extended learning beyond the classroom by encouraging hands-on development of applications that serve a myriad of needs within the research community."

"The applications developed during the SgCodeJam24 Hackathon are truly inventive. We admire and thank all the participants who dedicated their time and energy to this challenge," said Rafael Sidi, Vice President Product Management, Applications Marketplace and Developer Network, Elsevier.

The SgCodeJam24 is the most recent 24-hour hackathon hosted through the joint effort of Elsevier and a university partner. Similar collaborative challenges were conducted in the United States at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (February 5-6, 2011) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York (June 27-28, 2011).

SciVerse Applications and the Developer Network provide opportunities for researchers and librarians to collaborate with developers in creating and promoting new applications that improve research workflows. The Developer Network features a growing community of application developers who may gain recognition, prestige and revenue through their contributions to SciVerse Applications.

About National University of Singapore (NUS)

A leading global university centred in Asia, the National University of Singapore (NUS) is Singapore's flagship university which offers a global approach to education and research, with a focus on Asian perspectives and expertise.

NUS has 15 faculties and schools across three campuses. Its transformative education includes a broad-based curriculum underscored by multi-disciplinary courses and cross-faculty enrichment. Over 36,000 students from 100 countries enrich the community with their diverse social and cultural perspectives.

NUS has three Research Centres of Excellence (RCE) and 21 university-level research institutes and centres. It is also a partner for Singapore's 5th RCE. NUS shares a close affiliation with 16 national-level research institutes and centres. Research activities are strategic and robust and NUS is well-known for its research strengths in engineering, life sciences and biomedicine, social sciences and natural sciences. It also strives to create a supportive and innovative environment to promote creative enterprise within its community.  

For more information, please visit http://www.nus.edu.sg.

About National University of Singapore's School of Computing

Established in 1998, NUS School of Computing provides a stimulating environment that amalgamates the best of educational traditions, drawing its faculty staff of 200 from leading universities ranging from NUS, the Ivy League and Oxbridge.

The School, which is a fully fledged faculty within the National University of Singapore, has about 2,000 students, a quarter of them pursuing graduate studies. Since its early days as the only university department in Singapore that produced computing talent for the workforce, NUS School of Computing has produced a trail of distinguished alumni, including the chief executives and technology architects of multinationals and government agencies.

The School encourages excellence in diversity among its students. Some are winners of prestigious awards such as the National Infocomm Scholarship. Others are creative thinkers capable of besting their peers in international competitions in areas such as Games and Artificial Intelligence.

About the Elsevier SciVerse suite

The SciVerse (http://www.sciverse.com) suite of search and discovery offerings provides the global research community access to a constantly expanding universe of content and solutions which can now be accessed in one platform. The suite currently includes SciVerse ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com), the world's largest source of peer-reviewed content containing more than 10 million articles, and SciVerse Scopus (http://www.scopus.com), an abstract and citation database containing 41 million records, 70% with abstracts and nearly 18,000 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide. The platform also includes SciVerse Hub beta (http://www.hub.sciverse.com), which enables researchers to perform a single search across all of the SciVerse content as well as targeted web content with results ranked by relevancy and without duplication. SciVerse Applications (http://www.applications.sciverse.com) and Developer Network (http://www.developers.sciverse.com) allow the scientific community to build, find and use applications that enhance the SciVerse research experience.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai's Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

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