The Volkswagen Group Foundation is recruiting students to participate in the ‘2024 SEA:ME Hackathon’, its first official event since its establishment.
The 2024 SEA:ME Hackathon is a competition for the development of autonomous mobility, sponsored by the Volkswagen Group Foundation and organized by the Future Automotive Consortium (COSS), which is promoted by the Ministry of Education and involves the Intelligent Robotics Consortium.
SEA:ME (Software Engineering in Automotive and Mobility Ecosystems) is a program aimed at cultivating automotive software talent for college students, run by Volkswagen Group Korea in collaboration with Kookmin University since 2022. It aims to develop Korean students into skilled automotive software professionals through a 12-month curriculum at the non-profit coding school ’42 Wolfsburg’ in Germany.
Furthermore, Volkswagen Group Korea and Kookmin University are planning and implementing SEA:ME@Korea to adapt the curriculum to fit the domestic education system, thereby expanding access to students benefiting from the SEA:ME program. As part of this initiative, last summer they held the ‘2023 SEA:ME Summer Hackathon’ for 21 students from COSS participating universities alongside the launch of SEA:ME@Korea.
The Volkswagen Group Foundation has made the hackathon a core component of the SEA:ME@Korea program and is now recruiting students to participate in the ‘2024 SEA:ME Hackathon’ slated for July. To participate, teams of 4-5 undergraduate students or leave of absence students from eight COSS universities need to be formed and apply through their respective university’s COSS project team by May 31 (Friday). Following an evaluation by the project team, a total of 14 teams, around 70 individuals, will be selected and notified in early June. More details regarding the competition can be found on the respective project team’s website or the Volkswagen Group Foundation’s Instagram (www.instagram.com/vwg_wefoundation).
Til Schaefer, Chairman of the Volkswagen Group Foundation, remarked, “SEA:ME is a key program of the Volkswagen Group Foundation’s educational initiative ‘We: Run’ that has enabled excellent automotive software talents to grow and flourish in the field. We aim to expand the SEA:ME@Korea program centered around the hackathon so that more students can realize and fulfill their potential as automotive software professionals. “
Shin Seong-hwan, head of the COSS Future Automotive Consortium, stated, “The SEA:ME program, which operates with comprehensive support from the Volkswagen Group Foundation, has solidified its position as a major program for cultivating outstanding students who will lead the development of software-defined vehicles (SDVs). The COSS Future Automotive Consortium is dedicated to systematizing and advancing this initiative to allow it to be operated as a regular course and establishing collaborative structures to expand it to other universities.”
Meanwhile, as part of SEA:ME@Germany, Volkswagen Group Korea sent four Korean students to Germany in 2022, followed by ten in 2023, and is currently conducting training for a third cohort selected in February this year. The Volkswagen Group Foundation plans to select ten COSS Future Automotive Consortium students annually for the next two years, up to 2026, to provide training at ’42 Wolfsburg.’ Additionally, they intend to continually expand SEA:ME@Korea by restructuring the SEA:ME curriculum in various formats suitable for the Korean university system, including hackathons and clubs.
Lee Sang-jin daedusj@autodiary.kr