IIT students win accolades for innovative software products

Students from leading private higher education institute and pioneer in private tertiary education in Sri Lanka, Informatics Communication Technology (IIT), recently participated and performed exceptionally at both TADHACK Sri Lanka 2017 and National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA) 2017. 

The first leading private higher education institute to provide British degrees in both information communications technology and business in Sri Lanka, IIT was established in 1990. Over the years, IIT has produced a number of very successful entrepreneurs and software engineers that have contributed to both the local and international corporate and government entities. Its students have also gone on to win many accolades both locally and internationally.

TADHACK is an annually organised hackathon for developers and it also acts as a global meeting place for everybody interested in technology and creativity. It was initially started in 2013 as an effort to build an eco-system focused on telecom application development. Locally powered by hSenid Mobile Solutions, TADHACK Sri Lanka was hosted for the fourth consecutive year in Colombo recently. During the event, Team CodeFlakes, comprising students from IIT, created an SMS platform that provides advice and tips for pregnant women and new moms. It includes important reminders based on their gestation week or infant’s age in weeks and was awarded the first runner-up title. 
Meanwhile, the NBQSA competition serves to showcase and benchmark Sri Lankan ICT products. The competition has been conducted in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan section of the British Computer Society (BCS), the Chartered Institute for IT, over the past 18 years. 

The IIT students, Ramitha Weerasinghe and two teams comprising IIT students performed exceptionally and took home two Merit awards and a Bronze award. Weerasinghe from IIT secured a Bronze award with his project Source Co-Pilot, a source recommendation tool for novice programmers. 

One of the two Merit awards went to a team called Aprecium Labs, consisting students Brion Mario Silva, Hasitha Hiran Walpola, Savani Kavishka De Silva and Ramith Kisal, for creating a ‘Safe Plant’, which is a smart wrist band made to help kidney transplant patients in their aftercare process.

The other Merit award was won by Team Orasi, consisting students Isuru Kariyawasam – Founder, Janak Amarasena, Nipuni Paaris and Numee Thilakarathne, for their project ProjectOrasi 2.0 World, a highly efficient and accurate mobile device that has been designed to help improve their day-to-day lives without having to convert non-braille content into braille.