Leicester graduate excels in International Hackathon promoting women in computer science

When it comes to paving out a career post-university, Software and Electronics Engineering graduate Oishi Deb is showing everyone how it’s done.

Rather than kicking back and relaxing over the summer, Oishi jetted off to Barcelona to take part in WomENcourage 2017.

This International Hackathon was hosted at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, with the aim of encouraging women to pursue vocations in the field of computer science and ICT sector.

The program of events included professional conferences in supercomputing, workshops and courses on High Performance Computing (HPC), cyber security and digital interaction.

As if taking part wasn’t impressive enough, Oishi’s team-project at the Hackathon was awarded First Place.

Oishi said: “During this Hackathon we decided to create something useful that helps our community. Our project, ‘SafeHack’, is a device which automatically informs the emergency contact during an attack or an accident.

“The inbuilt sensors trigger the alarm and after three alarms it sends a text message to the emergency contact. If the person feels he/she is alright the person can also deactivate it before it goes to the third alarm. This was built using Arduino 101, GSM module, Intel IOT DevKit, and various sensors.”

This isn’t the first time that Oishi has engaged with events promoting women in ICT. She has attended many conventions over the past year, including a Future Female Engineers event and The Grace Hopper Computing Conference in London.

Oishi was awarded the prestigious President and Vice-Chancellor’s Student of the Year Award for 2017, and the BCS prize for 2017 which recognises one stand out Electronic and Software Engineering student.

Oishi’s journey with Leicester began as a student with our International Study Centre (ISC). The ISC offers year-long courses to International Students wishing to come to Leicester.