Students from the University of Gdańsk have become the only European team to make it through to the final round of the international information technology competition, where they took third prize in the category “IS That Serves Society”. The young programmers from the UG’s Department of Business Informatics designed and programmed an innovative mobile application by the name of SafeWatch, which  allows users to call for help discreetly during an emergency.

The AIS Student Chapter Competition is an international competition for teams of students – computer experts from all over the world, but mainly from the USA. This year’s final was held in April at the University of Alabama, USA. The students from Gdańsk were beaten only by two teams from Philadelphia’s renowned Temple University.

The Gdańsk team consisted of first-year Computer Applications in Business students from the University of Gdańsk’s Faculty of Management: Kamil Wojewski (team leader), Damian Kisielewski, Hubert Kisielewski, Maciej Kwapiński and Szymon Nagórski. This year several AiB students were able to start an AIS Student Chapter (the only one of its kind in Poland and one of few in Europe) at the Department of Business Informatics, which will carry on the close co-operation with the Association for Information Systems, for example by preparing for next year’s competition.

Safewatch is an app for mobile devices such as smartphones and smartwatches, which allows users to call for help in an emergency by using hand gestures. A few taps on the watch is enough to contact the police. The system recognises pre-set movements and then alerts the relevant service to the nature of the victim and situation, as well as recording the exact time of the call. It is currently at the working prototype stage. The young programmers hope to market it with the aid of Gdańsk’s Science and Technology Park.

The team members are students of a newly-formed specialisation, IT Applications in Business (AiB), the only one of its kind in the country, which is part of Computer Science and Econometrics and which was inaugurated this academic year at the University’s Faculty of Management, in a project partially funded by the EU. It allows students to acquire the knowledge and professional skills invaluable in today’s computer market: programming mobile apps, designing information systems and databases, analysing and constructing ERP systems, and administering secure information.

The originator, founder and co-ordinator of the AiB specialisation is Professor Stanisław Wrycza.

Translation: Magda Moran and Sean Moran