Hackathon: Circular Supply Chains for Critical Minerals
As part of the 14th Annual Sustainability Symposium at Columbia, join us for a one-day, multi-disciplinary event where your unique skills and ideas can help shape a more resilient and sustainable supply chain.
Winners of this Thursday event will be eligible for a presentation opportunity at the Sustainability Symposium on Friday.
The focus for this hackathon is on building solutions that enable practical, scalable re-use of critical minerals. Hackers will have 3 hours to develop a demo + business case using geospatial analysis and real-world data on manufacturing, mining, and recycling. Whether you're into software, hardware, geospatial engineering, data science, policy, finance, supply chain management, or just somone with a passion for solving tough problems, we hope to see you there.
To attend only the demo portion of the event, please select the "demo only" option when registering, and please plan to attend from 8:00pm to 10:00pm.
Food and beverages will be provided.
Agenda
5:00pm gather and meet
5:30pm small teams are formed, problem context from industry experts
6:00pm hack
8:00pm hackers present their demos
9:00pm judging and networking
What to bring: your climate-interested and solutions-focused attitude, your laptop or pen+paper, and your unique skillset.
Challenge Statement 1: uncover the value of critical minerals in electronic waste products
Challenge Statement 2: find the fit for critical minerals in the supply chain
More details and datasets on these challenge statements will be announced leading up to the event.
Deliverables: your team will present a demonstration and business case. More detail on how to format and submit the deliverables will be announced leading up to the event.
Teams: you can create your team of three at the event, or come with a team already formed.
Why critical minerals? Minerals such as copper, lithium, cobalt, and more are essential to modern energy infrastructure, yet their production remains heavily dependent on extractive primary mining. At the same time, aging infrastructure and electronics reaching their end of life creates a new resource. This presents an opportunity for urban mining, advanced recycling, supply chain analytics, and other circular techniques.
And how is this related to Climate Change? Diverting metals from waste into products can drastically reduce the need for carbon-intensive production of new minerals. It can also open up lower-cost electric infrastructure and strengthen supply chain resilience against geopolitical and environmental disruptions.
Event partners:
Columbia University https://www.columbia.edu/
New York Climate Exchange https://nyclimateexchange.org/
Terralytiq https://www.terralytiq.com/
Interested in sponsoring this hackathon, have an idea for the Challenge Statements, or want to help in some other way? Reach out to danbakke1@gmail.com
Participant guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mv_JzJpeUDxxOSPhvUGEHLamg5WY0wa0h7ldIONj0sc/edit?tab=t.0
Wifi Code: Unity475!