The participation of student teams from the University of the Aegean in the 3rd Innovation Marathon for smart cities, “City Challenge,” which was organized in Athens by the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece (KEDE), was completed with great success. Over 150 participants took part in the competition, presenting innovative ideas for transportation, waste management, citizen participation, safety, and quality of life in modern cities.

The University of the Aegean had more than 15 students in the final, making it the largest participation from a Greek university, with the following teams:

Design your City – A participatory governance platform for proposing ideas for municipal projects, utilizing cryptocurrencies to reward citizens who participate (implemented by Christos Soterelis, Zacharias Mitzelos, Nikolaos Bousios, and Iosifina Maragkou / University of the Aegean)

Bee Open – A Liquid Democracy application for local government (implemented by Christos Christou, Panagiotis Keramidis, Athanasios Kapsalis, and Nikolaos Stylianos Potaris / University of the Aegean)

Think Out Of The Code – An application for managing volunteering in municipalities (implemented by Konstantinos Kalyvas, Filippos Alexakis, Athanasios Moira, Nikolaos Katsilidis / University of the Aegean and Despoina Kalyva / University of Patras)

OctoQueue – A smart queue management application for museums, archaeological sites, and other city attractions (implemented by Emelia Myriam Michail, Maria Durmetaki, and Markos Paleologos / University of the Aegean)

After the evaluation process of over 30 proposals that reached the final stage of the competition, the Design your City team from the University of the Aegean won second place in the competition, with a cash prize of €3,000. The participation of the University of the Aegean students was supported by KEDE, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit, and the University of the Aegean’s Property Exploitation and Management Company.