The Media Line: Religious Women Innovate: JCT Hackathon Unveils Life-Saving Tech for Lost Travelers

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Religious Women Innovate: JCT Hackathon Unveils Life-Saving Tech for Lost Travelers

The winning team at Jerusalem College of Technology’s Hack.Her.It competition developed an app that can locate missing hikers in areas without cell reception

By Veronica Neifakh/The Media line

Last month, the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) held its seventh annual religious women’s hackathon, known as Hack.Her.It. Participating students developed technology aimed at aiding lost travelers and enhancing communication for local civil defense units, highlighting the growing importance of religious women in the tech industry.

Over 120 students from JCT’s three women’s campuses participated in the 26-hour competition, facing off against each other to solve challenges presented by some of Israel’s leading tech companies, including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Elbit Systems, Beit Halochem, and BonData.

JCT’s 5,000 or so students study on campuses separated by gender. Around 40% of the student body is ultra-Orthodox.

Orlee Guttman, co-founder of JCT’s Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center, told The Media Line that the college is devoted to working with religious students who might not have been exposed to entrepreneurship in their pre-college studies.

“We introduce students to their own skills and help them build confidence in their abilities to create products and companies,” Guttman said. “We train them to look at problems and find solutions.”

Thanks to the school’s accelerator and pre-accelerator program, students often graduate with projects that can be turned into startups, she said.

This year, the hackathon entries included a way for emergency response teams to communicate when external networks are down, a system to detect falls among the elderly, and a voice-activated shower for wounded soldiers, Guttman said. The winning team developed a communication system to prevent hikers from getting lost.

Registration for the hackathon closed early due to high demand. “This enthusiasm shows how passionate these women are about learning and being part of something new,” Guttman said.

She described the hackathon as a way to empower religious women to become innovators in the tech industry.

“We believe in teaching students to find solutions on their own and work within a team to build products, much like in industry,” she said. “This hackathon experience has been transformative for our women, who are now eager to continue developing their skills and ideas.”

According to Guttman, 18% of the women studying computer science in Israel do so at JCT.

Mai Eden, a member of the hackathon’s winning team, told The Media Line about the technology she and her partners developed.

“One of the challenges presented to us was to create technology capable of communicating and sending location status without reception or infrastructure, such as cellular or Wi-Fi networks. One of our group members immediately thought of the problem faced by hikers who can’t send a distress signal due to reception issues,” Eden said. “We then expanded on that idea to managing entire groups of hikers in remote areas. There are numerous cases of deaths of lost hikers or severe physical and mental injuries, many of which were preventable. This technology is important because it can save lives.”

Their idea, which they call TrekTag, is a wearable device specifically created for use in remote areas where cellular coverage is limited or nonexistent. TrekTag uses sensors that communicate via radio waves embedded in specialized bracelets. These radio waves function independently of cellular networks, enabling rescue teams to accurately locate lost travelers.

“The sensor obtains a location using GPS and sends it to the app using radio communication over a range of up to 30 km,” Eden said. “This is managed by the guide of the group, who will be able to see all the locations of the travelers. We hope to further develop the app to include distance alerts, distress signals, route planning, and more.”

She said she and her team would work with the Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center to continue developing the product.

“We are planning to meet with experts who can assist and advise us,” she said.

PHOTO- JCT Hackathon1.jpg – The winning team in the Jerusalem College of Technology Hack.Her.It hackathon in Jerusalem, July 2024. (Courtesy Jerusalem College of Technology)

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