At Junction Asia 2022, the Asian edition of Europe’s largest technology hackathon Junction (JUNCTION), Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) Department of Software Engineering student Mun Bong-o and four others formed the GeNovation team and placed third, demonstrating competitiveness on the international stage.

Hosted by Busan Metropolitan City and affiliated organizations such as SHIFT and Junction (JUNCTION), the event drew approximately 1,100 participants from Korea and abroad who competed for a total prize of 10 million won.

Junction (JUNCTION) began as a hackathon organized by the startup club at Aalto University in Helsinki, which launched SLUSH, the world’s largest startup ecosystem event. It has since become the largest hackathon in Europe.

A hackathon is an event in which participants intensely explore a specific problem and generate ideas to create innovative new technologies, such as web services or business models.

At the finals, where 310 students from 22 countries who passed the preliminary screening competed, the JBNU team tackled the track challenge posed by Chainapsis, a promising blockchain startup that operates the Keplr Wallet and the decentralized exchange Osmosis.

The track’s theme was "Blockchain Services Using Cosmos SDK," and the JBNU team developed a blockchain-based reliable resume management application, earning the award.

The project received positive evaluations for leveraging the blockchain’s immutable distributed state storage characteristic to create and share resumes from records issued to users by companies or institutions, thereby increasing trust in resumes and shortening the verification process.

Mun Bong-o, a fourth-year student, said, "I am pleased to have achieved a good result with my teammates at a large-scale, in-person global hackathon held after some easing of COVID-19. Through the blockchain track provided by Chainapsis, I enjoyed working on the project with mentors, and it was a valuable opportunity to develop a strong interest in blockchain technology."

Meanwhile, the JBNU Department of Software Engineering recorded a high employment rate of 81.0% in the 2020 employment statistics and has achieved outstanding results in student competitiveness, including a gold prize in a student paper competition and first place in the 2020 global hackathon competition. The department strives to strengthen student capabilities by offering in-house special lectures and educational programs on new technology trends to enhance students’ core competencies.