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The Co-Afina 2023 hackathon was promoted by the organizing alliance of the LA-CoNGA physics project with Creative Commons Venezuela, RedClara and the Academic Network of Ecuador (CEDIA), and sponsored by the ICTP Institute and its Physics Without Frontiers (PWF) program, the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) and the artificial intelligence company INAIT SA.

(Source LA CONGA) The seventy-eight participants of the second edition of the Latin American hackathon Co-Afina responded to the challenges posed by the use of open data on issues related to the environment, citizenship and education. For three days (in October this year), university students from different countries joined forces and contributed their solutions through the use of computational tools and interdisciplinary dialogues.

The students from thirty universities from eight Latin American countries, in sixteen teams, concentrated their efforts remotely on solutions that had to take into account: the degree of proximity to a solution to the challenge posed; the usability, creativity and functionality of their proposal; the practicality and innovation of the proposed solutions; as well as the way of communicating the development of the idea. The winning solutions focused on informed voting, financial forecasting and sustainable tourism.

The winning solution, which according to the jury received the highest score in the quality criteria, was that of the "DarkArmy" team, made up of representatives from the Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia), students of Physics and Systems Engineering. The proposal called "Electoral Radiography of Colombia" consisted of a web application that seeks to promote informed voting, so that citizens can vote with a more accurate view of the profile of candidates running for election. This team was formed by Jorge Jaimes, Camilo Carvajal, Brayan Barajas, Paula Uzcátegui. The winning solution can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0019wrS2c1s

The second place was awarded to the team "Chaotic Coders", composed of physics students from Yachay Tech University (Ecuador), with the proposal "Predicting the value of coffee", a model based on machine learning that uses historical data to estimate the future value of coffee in the financial market. Arianna Paredes, Mateo Carpio, Jordan Zambrano, Kevin Robalino were the runners-up. The solution is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fAKsmOL_Ls&t=1s and responded to the market forecasting challenge posed by Inait's Swiss team.

Finally, the third place was awarded to the "CongApps" team, made up of students from the Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia), Universidad Simón Bolívar (Venezuela) and Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru), who also proposed an application for citizens to know the profiles of candidates for elections, thus meeting the challenge of informed voting.

The students in this team were Steven Rico, Adrian Vasquez and Omar Medina.

Yany León Castañeda, representative of Red DataQuorum and Colombian challenger, expressed her excitement for having obtained two winning solutions in this hackathon, "it is the first time I have participated in an initiative like this and I have been surprised by the results obtained in such a short time, by the enthusiasm, knowledge and creativity of those who have participated.This is a great opportunity to continue generating networks in this effort to promote informed voting," he said.

This new edition of Co-Afina also had a special mention, awarded to the "Neotropical" team with the proposal called "Quantum Peru", which seeks to reduce the environmental impact of the presence of tourists in sites of environmental and archaeological-cultural interest, made up of students from Venezuela and Ecuador: Andrés Caña, Cristian Usca, Emilio Toledo, Rubén Niño and Isabella Sánchez, representing the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Universidad de Los Andes and Universidad San Francisco de Quito. The team responded to the challenge presented by Peruvian Ricardo Quispe, representing QuantumQuipu, who participated last year as a student and was encouraged this time to continue in the Co-Afina network as a challenger.

On the last day, after thanking the inter-institutional effort to carry out this new edition, the Co-Afina organizers highlighted the great work done by the Latin American student teams who, in such a short time, addressed the challenges posed by the regional context from a critical, creative and environmentally sensitive perspective. "They should be very proud of what they have done," said Reina Camacho, on behalf of the LA-CoNGA physics project.Arturo Sanchez, representative of INAIT SA, concluded by saying: "I hope to see you next year".