Naveen Jindal School of Management graduate student Shobhit Dalal and his team recently used their creativity and technical skills to win first place in JPMorgan Chase’s “Code for Good” Web application challenge. The competition was held October 10 and 11 in Chase’s corporate office in Columbus, Ohio.
“Code for Good” brought together 66 students studying technology at 23 universities across the nation to help create innovative solutions to social challenges. Divided into 12 teams, the students were given 24 hours to create a technological solution for one of two nonprofits: American Red Cross or the National Wildlife Federation (NWF).
Dalal’s five-member team was assigned the NWF, an organization that works to protect wildlife and habitat, and inspire future generations of conservationists. After hours of planning, consulting, building and coding, the team presented to judges their mobile and Web solution that connects new farmers with experienced farmers so they may share advice and practices that will help sustain the environment.
“Our challenge was to come up with a prototype of an optimum solution so that veteran farmers could connect with non-veteran farmers and share knowledge about effective methods to help protect the ecosystem,” Dalal said.
The application, named My Garden, features photos and feature stories about farmers, discussions, success stories, a blog page for experienced farmers and a FAQ page where questions are asked and farmers can vote on their preferred answers.
The team was selected, along with three others, for the final round. After presenting their prototype in that round, Dalal and his teammates were announced as the first-place team, and each team member won an Apple iPad Air.
Dalal, an MS in Information Technology and Management student who expects to graduate in spring 2016, is from Bombay. He and his teammates attribute excellent teamwork and diverse skills among their group for their win.
