Underdog Tech Award and Alem Cup: IT Competitions in Central Asia

We are sharing with you a selection of competitions where you can win cash prizes and receive support for the development of your project.

Yandex Cup

The prize fund is 38,000,000 KZT. The final and the awards ceremony for participants from different countries will take place offline at the Yandex office in Almaty.

The championship will take place in three stages. The qualification and semi-finals will be held online. The top 120 participants from all countries who showed the best results in the semi-finals will gather in Kazakhstan for the offline final and awards ceremony. This format will allow participants not only to test their skills but also to meet other developers from different countries. For everyone interested, Yandex will broadcast the final.

Deadline: October 29

Registration is available via this link.

NASA International Space Apps Challenge

This is an international hackathon for programmers, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, technologists, and other specialists in cities around the world, where teams participate for free in projects of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

After the hackathon, project applications are evaluated by experts from the space agency, and winners are selected to receive one of ten global awards.

When: October 7-8

Where: Bishkek, 242 Ogonbaeva Ataya Street, Maker Space

Deadline: October 5

Registration is available via this link.

Yandex ML Prize

Specialists from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan can participate.

The prize has five categories:

— "First Publication"

— "Researchers"

— "Young Scientific Supervisors"

— "Scientific Supervisors"

— "ML Instructors".

Specialists in generative models, speech recognition and synthesis, language processing, machine translation, and computer vision can also receive the award. There is a special category for Yandex employees presenting their work at international conferences.

Depending on the category, winners will receive between 500,000 and 1,000,000 rubles.

Deadline: October 16

You can submit an application via this link.

Underdog Tech Award

Early-stage technology startups located outside major IT hubs, whose solutions can or already have a significant positive impact on their communities and have good chances for rapid scaling, can participate in the selection for the Underdog Tech Award.

The first selection stage will end on December 1, 2023. In the second stage, which will begin in December 2023, the nominees for the award and 20 candidates shortlisted will be determined.

The prize fund of the award is $60,000.

Deadline: November 28

Registration is available via this link.

Alem Cup

Alem Cup is an open online programming championship where people of any age and background can participate. Tournament participants create artificial intelligence for bots that will compete against other players' bots in a computer game.

The championship is divided into three parts: "sandbox," "arena," and "final." On the "arena," experienced programmers compete for cash prizes in team standings, while anyone can participate in the "sandbox," even without programming skills, thanks to the visual programming language Blocky.

The prize fund of the competition is 2,100,000 million tenge.

Deadline for the entire event: October 13

Registration is available via this link.

STS CYBER CHALLENGE

Kazakhstani students of any major can participate.

Competition stages:

First stage: online in CTF format from September 30 to October 1

Second stage: offline in Astana, in "Cyber Range" format from October 25 to October 27.

Results will be available on the website after each stage.

Winners will receive valuable prizes:

— First place: Apple MacBook Pro M2

— Second place: Huawei MateBook D16

— Third place: Apple MacBook Air M1.

Deadline: September 29

Registration via this link

More information on the website.

"Project of the Year" Contest by Global CIO

There is no jury in the contest — winners are determined using a special methodology that includes online voting by members of the professional community and a comprehensive assessment of the scale and importance of the project implementation.

Final customers' IT leaders and IT solution providers can participate. Participation is free.

Deadline: November 15

You can view the terms and submit your project here.