Ex-Castlepollard trio on hackathon winning team

Castlepollard Community College past pupils Megan D’Arcy, Patrick D’Arcy and Jack O’Shea were part of a team of four that emerged as victors in the ‘Hack the Hub’ autumn hackathon in Belfast last week.

The three, and fourth member Lucy Bell, worked on an idea to help people protect themselves adequately with their insurance policies.

Called inSURE, the team proposed a genAI chatbot and analyser for natural disasters and focused on streamlining the claims process.

Megan, who has just finished a year’s placement with American company All State, explained that the idea was to create something that guided users through the process: “It was about highlighting what was and wasn’t covered in their policy,” she told the Westmeath Examiner this week.

“We also implemented safety features for natural disasters and created a live reporting system with real-time updates.”

Hack the Hub Autumn hackathon is a collaborative learning and development experience that brings together people interested in fintech, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning and ask them to work on problems.

Megan and Patrick are both studying maths and computer science at Queens University and Megan has completed her year as a data analytical intern. Jack is studying computer science at TU Dublin. Their fourth team member was PwC Associate Lucy Bell, a software engineering graduate.