UCLA students can now compete for an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and challenge to assist UCLA Chancellor Gene Block with developing his idea into a mobile application. With the help of a team of up to five students selected for their skills and interest, the chancellor would like to create software or an app that uses voice and speech recognition to analyze and improve the dynamics of group interactions.
Each undergraduate or graduate student chosen for Team Up with the Chancellor will be awarded $1,000 to work together to develop the app over the course of the summer. The new app, which must be completed by Aug. 31, will be presented sometime Sept. 14-16 at the 4th annual Mobility and Modern Web Conference hosted by the UCLA Office of Information Technology and its higher education and corporate partners.
The competition to become a member of Chancellor Block’s team is part of the third annual Code for the Mission, a separate competition inviting faculty, staff and students to develop mobile apps to promote UCLA’s mission of education, research and service. The chancellor’s app will not be entered into the main competition, which is offering $5,000 in prize money to each winning team selected in one of three tracks: Inspiring Women In STEM; mHealth; and Promoting Community Engagement and Civil Discourse. Both competitions are sponsored by UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research and Office of Information Technology.
Team up with the Chancellor is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students, who can apply as individuals or teams. Students with knowledge of and backgrounds in voice recognition and analysis; Cordova, JavaScript, html5 and speech recognition; Java and Android; iOS -Xcode and Swift programming; and artificial intelligence are encouraged to apply. Eligibility criteria can be found here. Applications must be received by May 1.
The final team of up to five students will be selected through a screening process conducted by Startup UCLA with final approval from UCLA's Offices of Intellectual Property and Information Technology.
Any and all software or other intellectual property created by the chancellor’s team will be owned by UCLA. Students on the selected team are allowed and encouraged to list and describe whatever they create in their resumes and portfolios as representative of their work. If the team completes a finished app during the term of the competition and it becomes available through the UCLA App store, the contributing team members may be eligible to share in the project commercially, organizers said.
To see other requirements for selected team members, go here. To find out how to apply, see this.
