Who are we?
0xA Science Association, opens an external URL in a new window An association to promote science and technology among the general public

The Challenge

The challenge would be to create an innovative and comprehensive community website for the JKU Linz that would serve as a central platform, bringing all of the initiatives and clubs on campus together and giving students easy access to the wide range of available activities. Our goal is to create a website that contains a central overview of all of the activities and events organized by the various groups and include a detailed description of the activities, as well as a presentation about the individual initiatives and clubs.

We also want to create an effective introduction and recruitment process at the start of each semester and not only provide new students with easy access to various opportunities, but also support inclusion into the community. We plan to introduce a regulars' table and encourage interaction between members from the various initiatives. The platform should serve as an opportunity for association boards to coordinate events together, plan projects, and share ideas. The platform's decisions will be decided democratically at a grassroots level, with each association/initiative nominating a designated person. The final details will be decided upon when implementing the project. The platform will foster collaboration and coordination between the various groups, and create a supportive network within the communities, which includes sharing resources and equipment.

Three main responsibilities and challenges need to be addressed: technically implementing the aforementioned website, creating a platform for (future) members from the communities and associations, and creating an organizational structure to coordinate and work together with the associations and their leaders. The Fellows are expected to possess different skill sets in these areas.

Who are we looking for?

• A Coordinator (10hrs/wk): Experience in project management, strong communication skills, effective team leadership, extensive knowledge about communities
• A Developer (20hrs/wk): Experience in web development, particularly GitHub, SPA, JSON
• A Developer (20hrs/wk): Experience in web development, particularly: GitHub, SPA, JSON,YAML
   

Interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Alexander Peherstorfer

Who are we?
0xA Science Association, opens an external URL in a new window An association to promote science and technology among the general public

The Challenge

We want to simplify access to scientific topics by communicating them in an easily understandable way. The goal is to build a bridge between scientific technical jargon and a wider public, especially newly enrolled students who are often confronted with complex technical terms and concepts. We strive to create an open and accessible space by introducing interactive communication channels, encouraging interaction between students and the association community.
A dynamic and inclusive environment will facilitates student involvement within the 0xA community and its diverse events. By creating a platform that encourages students to actively take part and share ideas with like-minded individuals, we hope to not only break down the barriers when it comes to learning about complex technical topics, but also inspire and support interest in science and research.

Beyond that, we aspire to directly engage new students in the communities' activities by providing opportunities to become more actively involved and pursue personal interests. We want to create a culture of shared learning and collaboration, enabling students to not only passively engage with academic topics, but also actively contribute to the building and growing the community.

Potential approaches to tackle this challenge include the use of interactive content on our social media accounts, posted in coordination with events and our community. Meticulous planning and strategizing, including feedback over the course of the project, ensuring progress is made.

We understand that this is a challenging endeavor requiring both creative and technical solutions. We aim to make sure that we meet the communities' needs and expectations by carefully planning and executing our strategic approach, and by listening to - and taking feedback into account - while providing an inspiring and supportive environment where students can realize their full potential.

Who are we looking for?
We are looking for 2 Fellows able to work 10 hours/week, and who have planning experience as well as experience creating social media content, a strong background in research, and the ability to correctly handle sources and domain-specific content knowledge covered by the association.

Interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Alexander Peherstorfer

Who are we?
Accessibility Buddies assist in education, R&D and administration by creating new PDF documents or editing existing ones.

The Challenge

A large proportion of public documents are inaccessible but this will change soon. The European Accessibility Act, opens an external URL in a new window is in effect and its transition period ends in June 2025. Austria is implementing the Accessibility Act, opens an external URL in a new window and the Web Accessibility Act, opens an external URL in a new window.

These acts will initially involve the JKU itself, both in teaching and administration, as well as the business community, administrations, and all areas of civil society. Effective implementation requires expertise and skills!

We'll start off small but get straight to the point: The JKU generates an immense amount of pdfs on a daily basis, most of which are inaccessible. Accessibility Buddies supports

• teaching people how to make accessible PDF documents
• providing direct and immediate assistance and sharing expertise (training - on/off the job)
• collecting originals and their accessible counterparts
• developing/expanding the database for AI-based "check and repair" tools (supported or automated) in order to:
  • support accessibility when creating PDF documents
  • Check and repair the pool of PDF documents

Together with the Institute for Integrated Studies (www.jku.at/iis) and the AI-I (www.ki-i.at), opens an external URL in a new window, the JKU is taking a leading role in R&D by supporting accessibility. In cooperation with computer science, AI and in an interdisciplinary dialog with other departments, PDF documents will be made practically barrier-free alongside research and education (projects, Bachelor's/Master's theses), providing a service to students and employees who are disabled, and meet legal regulations as well as foster inclusion.

The results form the basis to carry out R&D and improve this service's efficiency and effectiveness. The (manually) tagged and accessible JKU PDFs are extended to a sufficiently large database to be able to "feed" a Large Language Model (LLM) and support this job well, or automate it long-term. WE SHOW HOW IT'S DONE, THEN AI DOES IT BY ITSELF!

We intend to use new, large language models in a meaningful way to automate the required processing work. Are there tools and processes that could support an "Accessible JKU"? And what might the JKU's pioneering role in business and in society look like?

Accessibility Buddies assist in education, R&D and administration by creating new PDF documents or editing existing ones. Starting in areas with an immediate need, then in areas where there is a legal requirement, and lastly as a natural part creating an accessible, open, equal opportunity and democratic JKU/society.

Thanks to practical, hands-on experience and data, the tool issue is being addressed one step at a time, within the broader community at research institutes such as the Institute for Integrated Studies, Informatics, AI, and others willing to take up the challenge of creating a barrier-free JKU and future society.

The challenge's output is open: A concept to create a tool and a service within an interested community and power group, training classes, workshops, new courses ... . Aand always user-centered.

Who are we looking for?

We would like to encourage four Fellows to take on this challenge, based on the Fellows' skills and specialization in, for example:

• Informatics and/or Software Engineering
• AI, Data Science and LLMs
• Medical Engineering
• UI and Design
• Digital Society
• Education,
  
  they will provide support and expertise in their field..
  
  As the challenge draws on expertise in IIS and AI-I's and experience (and involves a graduate thesis about LLM-based processing for accessible documents as well as a technological component at this level), the Fellows' technological focus and the project is not absolutely required and is open.

Are you interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Jack Heseltine

Who are we?
boudicca.events, opens an external URL in a new window - Making events accessible to everyone

The Challenge

Accessibility is important to us, both in terms of event information and at the events themselves. After all, taking part in art and culture can require all kinds of things for all kinds of people. This is why we have created boudicca.events in order to make events accessible to everyone.

The JKU Community Call challenge involves optimizing the frontend in an effort to make the application more user-friendly and more intuitive.This challenge involves collecting feedback and drawing up suggestions as well as implementing solutions on the frontend.

Specific assignments include:

• Improving the initial user experience: Previous feedback included problems with intuitive use. How can we improve the front end so that it is more user-friendly? Would an introduction text or visual language be helpful?
• Improving the filter options: How can the filter process be made more visual and functional?
• Optimizing responsivity: The interface and user-friendliness should function without any problems on all digital end devices (smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc..)
• Draw up suggestions on how people with visual impairments can use the website
• Provide more information: Up to now, users have only been able to see the event date, time and location. How can we display additional information on boudicca.events without having to go to the original event website?
• Design thinking processes and creating personas: Who uses our website, when, and why? What kind of needs and expectations do these individuals have? Developing personas helps us to get a more precise idea of our target group(s).
• User testing: In order to make the website truly accessible to everyone, we want to know what our users need. A test user can help and test users can come from new or existing. The test must be planned (such as, what features should we test? How do we measure the feedback? How many test users do we need?) and, once the test has been carried out, the results need to be analyzed.
• Establishing new partnerships: We are constantly looking to expand our network to find supporters and new expertise. A future partner will be the JKU Institute for Integrated Studies.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking for 2 Fellows to work together and tackle this challenge. In terms of responsibilities, they would be divided between the following 2 roles:

User Experience Fellow

• Technical skills play less of a role; being interested in UX design and accessibility is more important. The co-design for boudicca.events takes place from a "social" perspective. In addition to developing and researching proposals regarding accessibility features, user testing is also a key part of the process.

Frontend Development Fellow

• Experience working with frontend software development
  Our current tech stack is VanillaJS, VanillaCSS, Handlebars Java Port

• Source: Github

The Fellows will work together on several concepts and features in the areas of user experience, usability, and accessibility. There are several tickets in our GitHub project for this purpose, each of which is processed independently by the Fellows. This means that everyone has an overview of upcoming steps at all times. The current team members will provide the Fellows with support and guidance.

Interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Matthias Holzinger

Who are we?
boudicca.events, opens an external URL in a new window - Making events accessible to everyone

The Challenge

Accessibility is important to us, both in terms of event information and at the events themselves. After all, taking part in art and culture can require all kinds of things for all kinds of people. This is why we have created boudicca.events in order to make events accessible to everyone.

The JKU Community Call challenge involves adding the last missing features to address important use cases in the social environment.

Specific assignments include:

• Integrate with OpenStreetMap data to improve accessibility information and other location data.
• Integrate with OpenStreetMap to search and filter nearby events. This could be extended to walking distance & public transport in the future.
• Develop a PDF publisher with filter functions and customized data/templates via parameters.
• Predefine filters as a subdomain to quickly access events of interest, such as jku.boudicca.events to display all of the events in and around the JKU. This feature would be a joint solution with the Fellows in the other boudicca.events challenge.
• Revise the topic of event locations, display information about event locations, and filter by location to provide users with better information.
• Improve the technical stability by means of better automated tests.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking for 1 Fellow who will approach the challenges together with the other Fellows involved in our project.

Backend Development Fellowship:

• Experience in software development, ideally Java/Kotlin

• Our current tech stack is Kotlin, SpringBoot, Gradle/Kotlin Gradle DSL, OpenAPI, REST

• Github, opens an external URL in a new window

The Fellows will work together on several concepts and features in the areas of user experience, usability, and accessibility. There are several tickets in our GitHub project for this purpose, each of which is processed independently by the Fellows. This means that everyone has an overview of upcoming steps at all times. The current team members will provide the Fellows with support and guidance.

Link to Github issues, opens an external URL in a new window

Interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Matthias Holzinger

Who are we?
The Cyberducks are a highly motivated and enthusiastic student association committed to supporting science, research, education, and developing prototypes in the fields of engineering and natural sciences.

The Challenge
Our engineering challenge involves improving and advancing our existing foot lifter 2.0, previously designed by Linz hACkT and UpdateSocial. The goal is to create an innovative and affordable assistive device give those with limited mobility a chance to live a more active, independent life.

As part of this challenge, we are planning to continue improving the current foot lifter model and incorporate suggestions. In addition, we would like to create other models using different materials and then compare these models' functions. By comparing the different prototypes, we expect to identify a material which is not only effective, but also easy to process and locally available.

Another important aspect is to compile detailed documentation to replicate the foot lifter. We want to make sure that the supplies needed to construct the foot lifter are readily available and the instructions to replicate it are clear and detailed. The documentation will not only help make the foot lifter more accessible to a larger number of people, it will also contribute to sharing information and expertise in the production of assistive technologies.

We also plan to collect feedback from people testing the foot lifter. The information will enable us to continue improving the design and performance of the foot lifter and make sure we can meet the needs and demands of those for whom it is intended.

To promote our project, we plan to once again contact senior centers in Linz. We believe that our foot lifter can be a valuable asset to many seniors suffering from peroneal palsy, and we hope that by partnering with senior centers we can connect to a larger number of people.

Our goal is to create an effective and affordable foot lifter and help those with limited mobility lead a more independent, active life. We hope to make the foot lifter accessible to a greater number of people by continuing to improve and advance the existing model, draft documentation to replicate the foot lifter, and collect data & feedback.

What kind of skills are we looking for?

Coordinator
Responsibilities: 
•    Contact to external parties (non-technical issues) 
•    Present findings
•    Documentation (test documentation, instructions)
 Personal Skills
•    Organizational skills 
•    Manual skills
•    Experience with textiles, sewing techniques 
•    Experience with 3D printing

1 to 2 Hardware Fellows 

Responsibilities: 
•    Create models (calculate forces, compare performance of V1, V2 and V3, create digital simulation models (heavy))
•    Construct version 3 together with the other members 
•    Construct a reference model for lower limbs that have loose joints (ankle joint potentially adaptable from a partner project) 
•   Share information with our partner project about prosthetic extremities (foot/ankle joint) 
(develop measurement methods, share & discuss potential partnership with Sendance) 
•    Produce models customized to test patients (foot measurements, taking medical conditions into account such as varicose veins))
•   Collect data
 Personal Skills
•    Manual skills 
•    Experience with textiles, sewing techniques 
•    Experience with 3D printing 
•    Experience in biomechanics 

Subrole Textile Specialist

Responsibilities: 
•    Select technical textiles (create an overview of textiles incl. their respective specifications & standards, evaluate accessible ordering processes, find references colleagues can use for better familiarization and as a reference)
•    Improve the design in terms of fitting the orthosis 
•    It is currently too complicated and cumbersome for everyday use
•    Visual enhancement (matching colors)

Personal Skills
•    Manual skills 
•    Experience with textiles, sewing techniques 
•    Experience with 3D printing

Interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Patrick Kary

Who are we?
The Cyberducks are a highly motivated and enthusiastic student association committed to supporting science, research, education, and developing prototypes in the fields of engineering and natural sciences.

The Challenge

The engineering challenge consists of constructing prostheses that meet users' physiological requirements to the best of their ability by means of state-of-the-art methods and equipment. The goal is to not only identify and encourage innovative and creative solutions that take proven methods and techniques into account, but also take a fresh look at new ideas. In addition, when selecting and designing the processes and methods, the goal is to strive for potential automation and simple production in order to be able to adapt quickly to individual needs.

The objective is to construct and build a prosthetic arm and a prosthetic foot that is both functional and cost-effective.

Based on the Hackberry Project, this is a 3D printable, open source project to create a bionic arm prosthesis and to be built and tested as part of this project. The goal is to optimize the features and user-friendly aspects of the arm prosthesis by taking user feedback into account and exploring experimental enhancements, such as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).

Using a modern, 3D powder printing process in combination with composite materials, the goal is to create a cost-effective, customized, easy to manufacture product. Using these materials to create a robust structure will help the product withstand everyday use. In addition to basic features, we will take potential enhancements such as compliant mechanisms, silicone shock absorbers, and carbon soles into account. These will be used to improve comfort, stability, and natural movement of the prosthetic foot, while at the same time guaranteeing affordability and efficient production.

What kinds of skills are we looking for?

Coordinator
Responsibilities:

• Contact to external parties (non-technical issues)
• Present findings
• Documentation (test documentation, instructions)

Personal Skills:

• Organizational skills
• Manual skills
• Experience with textiles, sewing techniques
• Experience with 3D printing

2 hardware/software Fellows

Responsibilities:

• Draft base plates - ankle & foot
• Create a modular concept to couple the base plate with different prosthesis systems
• Create mechanical models (calculate forces)
• Share information & coordinate with foot lifter partner projects (develop measurement methods, share information about a potential partnership with Sendance)
• Create digital models (create digital simulation models (difficult))
• Develop different algorithms for an arm prosthesis (evaluate current algorithms, conduct model adaptation, compare performance)

Personal Skills:

• Manual skills
• Experience with 3D printing
• Experience in software development (Microcontroller, C++)
• Experience with simulations
• Experience with CAD
• Experience in biomechanics
• Experience with standardized medical technology components
   

Interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Patrick Kary

Who are we?
PflegeZeit – See the person. We are developing a caregiver platform to provide digital, personalized animation programs for dementia patients which have a significant and scientifically proven impact on stabilizing the disease's progression.

The Challenge

Our technological challenges revolve around two core issues: developing a secure authentication system and optimizing database management. These objectives are closely tied to developing our PflegeZeit app, an innovative platform to support caregivers and people living with dementia by providing customized activation exercises.

A secure authentication system: The main part of this challenge involves creating an authentication system which is crucial to make sure only authorized users can access their personal data and the app's functions. This would involve implementing authentication methods, such as OAuth and JWT, to guarantee a strong and sold security infrastructure. A system like this is a fundamental component of any modern app and what you learn can be easily transferred to other projects. You get an opportunity to apply valuable hands-on expertise in these areas alongside with what you learn in the classroom.

Efficient database management: The second cornerstone in our challenge would be to develop an efficient, scalable database management system. When it comes to managing the extensive user data and activity logs, this system is vital. The goal is to create a flexible database layout with the help of a migrating tool, such as Liquibase. This is an important part of the program development process, which is unfortunately often neglected in theory because we can only see the benefits of this approach when several developers are involved, when there is a lot of data, and over a longer period of time.

By implementing these challenges, you can expand on your technical skills in the areas of software development and database management. In addition, we offer valuable and practice-related insight into developing apps, a skill you can use to build your professional career after graduation. You will also acquire important skill sets to work on larger projects, skills that are often not taught in the classroom but are indispensable in day-to-day professional situations.

Who are we looking for?
Authentication system (2.5 Fellows)

• Required: An understanding of Java and/or Kotlin, a basic grasp of Spring Boot
• Optional: Experience with authentication systems and approaches (such as OAuth, JWT), experience in API development and RESTful APIs, an understanding of cybersecurity and data protection
• Assignment: Design and implement the authentication system. Implement API endpoints within this system conduct quality controls.

 Database and Backend (1 Fellow)

• Skills: Experience with database technologies (SQL and NoSQL)
• Optional: Backend development languages (preferably Python and/or Java/Spring Boot), an understanding of data modeling and management.
• Assignment: Develop and optimize the database management system

Naturally, you don't have to do it all on your own; our team will be by your side, providing you with guidance and support and sharing expertise as well as teaching you how to work effectively as part of a team. You not only acquire valuable, hands-on experience, we also encourage sharing expertise and ideas between - and within - the community.

Interested in taking part in this challenge? 
Contact: Alexander Loidl