The National College of Ireland will host this year’s NASA Space Apps Challenge, with Paola Vercesi as local lead.
When Apollo 11 mission crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in July 1969 and took that giant leap for humankind, they pitched up in a crater known as the Sea of Tranquillity. For the astronauts on board and for the millions watching at home, this moment was anything but.
For one small Italian girl watching on TV with her family, the excitement and wonder of this moment had such an effect as to become her first ever lasting memory.
“It was kind of an imprinting for me,” Paola Vercesi tells SiliconRepublic.com. “From then on, I kept talking about space.”
Over the next few years, 10 more astronauts landed on the moon. Vercesi says by the age of 5 she could recite the names of every one of them.
She had her heart set on becoming an astronaut or astrophysicist. And then the realities of life hit harshly. As a teenager in Italy in the 80s, Vercesi was told her dream of going to space was unrealistic. “That happens to girls,” she says magnanimously.
She ended up going down a different path altogether and studied political science at university.
She first came to Ireland in the 90s. “When Dublin was a dirty old town,” she laughs, “and I loved it.” She has left a few times over the years, but her love for the place always brings her back.
During her career, Vercesi has worked for the likes of Maserati, Ferrari, Amazon and Microsoft in various marketing, communications and data analysis roles.
But space has remained her true passion.
NASA Space Apps Challenge
Since 2023, Vercesi has worked as the local lead and hackathon host in Dublin for the NASA International Space Apps Challenge – the world’s largest hackathon – held in October every year.
Vercesi is excited to announce that this year’s Dublin event, which runs on 4-5 October, will be hosted at the National College of Ireland (NCI).
NCI continues in the role, having been mission control for the last two years. And the team at NCI offer huge support for the event, Vercesi says.
The two-day hackathon brings together a diverse group of innovators to use open data provided by NASA and partner space agencies, with the aim of creating solutions to “real challenges” faced on Earth and in space.
“We welcome people from any background, any age, with willingness to interact with this data and information from space,” Vercesi explains. She emphasises that you don’t need to be a tech or data expert to get involved. People are often intimidated when they hear the word ‘hackathon’, she says, but they really shouldn’t be, as the challenges need all kinds of skills and perspectives.
This year’s theme is ‘learn, launch, lead’, with a range of challenges set by NASA subject matter experts. Some of the challenges are very technical and some are more creative, Vercesi says. She finds it’s fascinating to see different teams come up with different solutions to the same challenge.
People can sign up in teams, or by themselves and they will be assigned to teams.
And there are mentors, including academics from NCI and University College Dublin, and data scientists from IBM on hand to support the teams.
A local Community Choice Award will be presented to one project, and a judging panel will select one project to advance to the global judging stage. Just 10 teams from the thousands that take part globally – nearly 15,500 last year – will be invited to NASA HQ for a prize-giving ceremony and will have the chance to develop their projects with the support of NASA and partner space agencies.
The Challenge has global collaborators such as Google and Microsoft that provide equipment for teams, but Vercesi says the local events also look for collaborators.
She’s keen to appeal to Irish space companies to reach out to her and get involved with the event.
Though Vercesi leads the event, there’s a whole team involved, and she highlights the work of Dr Athanasios Staikopoulos, assistant professor in computing at NCI, who she commends for his expert advice. He goes through all the challenges when they’re released, she says, and really helps them understand what is achievable for different teams.
From left: Dr Athanasios Staikopoulos and Paola Vercesi at the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2024. Image: Paola Vercesi
Vercesi says there is always a great vibe and energy at the events. “I love being in that environment.
“I really learn so much from the participants and I really enjoy seeing how the projects come together.”
Love at first data insight
Vercesi first got involved in the Space Apps Challenge as a participant herself. ‘Data’ had become a real buzzword in marketing, she says, and she had obtained a postgraduate diploma in data analytics. Now she wanted to combine her communications and data skills.
She worked on an Earth observation project for the Challenge, looking at how pollution diminished in northern Italy during Covid.
Vercesi says she basically taught herself GIS (geographic information systems) overnight to work on the project. And then she says something you probably don’t here very often – she fell in love with GIS. Love at first data insight perhaps.
She continued this infatuation with a certificate in GIS and digital mapping at Atlantic Technological University and will start a diploma in GIS at University College Cork in the autumn.
Vercesi’s love of learning and passion for her work is infectious – an asset for any communicator.
‘The overview effect’
I ask Vercesi what she thinks is the value of science communication. “I really think that communication is everything.” Science isn’t just something theoretical that happens in labs, she says. It’s informed by and informs the real world around us. And communication helps people understand the influence of that scientific work on their everyday lives.
She gives the example of space (obviously). There are technologies we use every day such as Google Maps that wouldn’t exist if not for space science, she says.
From left: ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano with Paola Vercesi at ESA Esrin Centre for Earth Observation in Frascati, Italy. Image: Paola Vercesi
This is one of the things that drew Vercesi to the Space Apps Challenge. It helps people make the link between space and data, and how it can affect their daily lives, she says.
“But there is something more individual, I think, more personal about space that I want to communicate.”
Vercesi talks with something close to reverence about her visit to Houston, Texas last year to participate in the International Space University Space Studies Program – an intensive eight-week course to train people moving into space careers.
While in Houston, she visited Space Explorers: The Infinite, an immersive virtual reality tour of space guided by real astronauts.
“You see the Earth as the astronauts see it,” Vercesi says, showing me that she has goosebumps even now as she remembers the experience.
“It’s the overview effect … it’s really something that touched me and I want to bring that feeling of belonging to the universe, to the Earth, to people. I want to communicate that.”
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