Veolia Middle East, the benchmark company for ecological transformation offering game-changing solutions for water, waste and energy management, is hosting the region’s first PlankThon Challenge in partnership with the Tara Ocean Foundation.

Announced on World Oceans Day on June 8^th, 2021, the PlankThon Challenge is a 48-hour ecological hackathon in which students from all over the world will utilize coding, AI and data to create low-energy solutions enabling the work of scientists studying the oceans and the consequences of climate change on marine life.

Veolia is calling on all talented, tech-savvy and eco-conscious students from across the Middle East region to participate in the online hackathon, taking place from June 25^th to 27^th, 2021.

As part of the challenge, teams of two to four students will have 48 hours to imagine a way to qualify a database of hundreds of thousands of plankton photos collected from the current expedition being carried out by the Tara Ocean Foundation. The solutions must be low energy-consuming (to be used on a Raspberry Pi, for example), and the winning entry will be deployed on the famous research schooner, the Tara, to work with the Planktoscope developed by the Plankton Planet and Stanford University.

The eight best teams at the end of the 48-hour challenge will be invited to pitch their solution on July 1^st, in front of a jury of experts from Veolia, the Tara Foundation and the Villefranche/Sorbonne University Oceanography Laboratory. The three best teams will be awarded Raspberry Pi devices and low power tech accessories worth a total of €20,000.

The winning team will also have the unique privilege of experiencing the schooner Tara first-hand. Originally built in France in 1989 by medical explorer Jean-Louis Étienne specifically for scientific expeditions, the Tara is a 36-metre aluminium-hulled schooner dedicated to ocean exploration and environmental research. The winning team will meet the Tara Ocean Foundation team aboard the Tara when they return from the Microbiomes Mission in Lorient, in October 2022, and enjoy a fantastic opportunity to see their winning solution at work.

Registration for the PlankThon Challenge is open from the 8^th to 23^rd of June 2021. Teams can register via the website: www.veolia.com/en/careers/plankthon-challenge.

The event kicks off at 5pm CET on Friday, June 25^th, and ends at 5pm CET on Sunday, June 27^th. The eight finalists will be announced on Tuesday, June 29^th, and will then be invited to make their final pitch on Thursday, July 1^st, 2021.

The winning team will be announced on Monday, July 5^th, 2021.