Students in JP Morgan Code for Good Challenge

In November 2012 the first ever J.P. Morgan Code for Good Challenge took place in London. The challenge was an opportunity for top tech talent from UK universities to come into J.P. Morgan, and through their team coding skills, use technology to address a social challenge for one of their three partner charities: Centrepoint, WaterAid or The Nature Conservancy. 
 
Three students from Kings College London's Department of Informatics attended and J.P Morgan were particularly impressed with the standard of the work of King’s students. Teams were combined and made up of students from different universities. King’s students, Jawad Memon and Tomáš Vítek were members of Team Quicksort which also included a recent King's graduate, Krzysztof Rosset (now studying for a MSc at the University of Oxford). Christopher Pigden, another King's student, was a member of Team Craft.

Team Quicksort was one of the top two finalists for the WaterAid challenge, which required the students to interpret Wateraid’s XML data files as part of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). They put together a great user interface and presentation which really delved into the reasoning behind why the data was being released and how it could be interpreted. Team Craft was also on the WaterAid challenge with an embeddable visualization tool which could sit client side, taking into consideration the hosting costs and requirements.

Students coded for over 30 hours and then gave first round presentations to the judging panel.  The top 6 teams (2 representing each charity) were selected as finalists and presented again to the final judges and all their fellow Coding Challenge attendees.  A winner from each charity was selected, with the overall winner announcement rounding off a fantastic weekend. 

All who attended have been invited to apply for a fast-tracked recruitment process for the Technology Intern and full-time Graduate programmes in Europe. More information on J.P Morgan’s Tech for Good Social programme can be found on their website.