News Archive

A seven-strong Bloom team tackled and won the Woodside Unearthed hackathon earlier this month. Unearthed hackathons are unique 54-hour long events focused on the energy and resources sector, where teams solve a real-life problem for Woodside.

Fat Controller , the team comprising primarily of UWA students who are computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians competed against 21 other teams over the weekend.

The team’s prototype improved the packing and scheduling of cargo ships to service Woodside’s offshore facilities. By delaying ships until they were almost full, the team could reduce the number of trips made by one-third without dramatically affecting time to delivery – resulting in a large cost saving.

“It was an incredibly taxing weekend but having the opportunity to apply what we learnt at university to a real-world industry problem was totally worthwhile. In particular, it was awesome to see so many other young people and students competing, said Mark Shelton, Founder & CEO of Bloom.

“It’s important that we prepare our young people for the jobs of the future, and opportunities to work on industry problems like this are a core part of that.”

Bloom is a youth-led organisation encouraging more young Western Australians to be entrepreneurial, providing inspiration, education and guidance. Bloom currently has 25 young entrepreneurs working from the BloomLab based at St Catherine’s College .

The winning team was made up of Mark Shelton (21, Founder of Bloom), Ilyas Ridhuan (24, Founder of Veri Vote), Adrian Petersen (23, Founder of Mad Brew Coffee), Michael Ford (20, Founder of Hectare), Dylan Johnston (23, Founder of Veri Vote & Mad Brew Coffee), Tom Smoker (23) and Alex Khor (21).

The Young Innovators Award was won by No Returns from UWA that also included a Bloom volunteer, Ashwin D’Cruz, a research assistant with the UWA System HealthLab.