LS Future Lab - Impact Challenge: La Salle-URL students work on challenges related to the SDGs

For 48 hours, students from La Salle Campus Barcelona-URL took part in the LS Future Lab - Impact Challenge 2022, a hackathon in which challenges linked to three of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were worked on: 3 (health and well-being), 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and 12 (responsible production and consumption). The activity was sponsored by the Fundació Caixa d'Enginyers and with the collaboration and organization of La Salle Technova, the innovation park of La Salle Campus Barcelona.

Students from the different areas of La Salle-URL (engineering, architecture, management and digital arts) formed multidisciplinary work teams to seek innovative and creative solutions to the challenges posed by the organization:

1. New solutions to improve air quality in a public space
2. New solutions to create a more efficient and sustainable home.
3. New solutions for recycling, efficiency and sustainability in consumption for cities.
4. New solutions to make delivery food more sustainable.
5. New solutions to make transport and urban mobility more sustainable.

"At Caixa d'Enginyers we have incorporated the SDGs into our strategy when designing products and services. We are convinced that alliances are what allow these SDGs to be accelerated, and that is why we work with La Salle-URL", explained the director of the Fundació Caixa d'Enginyers, Iñaki Isarri. During the hackathon the students were able to work on their hard and soft skills, conducting market research, building prototypes and preparing for the final launch of the project. Throughout the activity, the students had mentors who advised them.

Innovative projects linked to the SDGs

To present the projects, the groups had to prepare an elevator pitch in front of a panel of experts who evaluated them: Iñaki Isarri, director of the Fundació Caixa d'Enginyers; Paul Fox, academic coordinator of the degree in Digital Business, Design and Innovation at La Salle-URL; Danae Vera, CPO and co-founder of Gocleer; Blanca Ochoa, lawyer expert in sustainability and business angel; and Alexandra Romero, Product Manager at La Salle Technova. The two winning projects were:

• 'Ticko', the winning project, is an application that allows companies to send purchase receipts and invoices to customers, minimizing paper spending and allowing customers to easily access their receipts and expense statistics. The group was made up of students Carla Zou Yin Rodríguez, Gemma Yebra, Jan Esteve, Jaume Gonzalez and Oriol Merino.
• 'Smart delivery', the project that came second, is a sustainable solution for food delivery packaging, which proposes reusable lunch boxes that can replace single-use ones through its own application or the same delivery application. The group was made up of students Fernando Rivera, Jordi Rodeiro, Mariia Deinega and Tadala Rodney.

All students who participated received a certificate of participation. For its part, the winning project will be able to participate in the Tech Demo Day 2023 and the second winner in the T-Start pre-acceleration program, both organized by La Salle Technova.