The University of New Mexico invites teams from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) to apply to participate in the first-ever Swarmathon competition. The competition takes place April 18-22, 2016 at the NASA Kennedy Space Center.

Swarmathon participants will be challenged to create robotic swarms to revolutionize to space exploration. The project aim is to get 1,000 students from 50 MSIs to participate in the next three annual competitions..

“The Swarmathon challenges students underrepresented in computer science to create innovative new solutions for robotics,” junior computer science major Lihn Tran said. Tran will present her Deterministic Spider Algorithm for multi-robot search at the IROS conference in Hamburg, Germany on Sept. 28.

Students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions and Tribal Colleges and Universities and other MSIs are invited to apply for Swarmathon.

For more information about the competition and eligibility, visit the Swarmathon website, Facebook, follow #Swarmathon or email info@NasaSwarmathon.com.

Applications are due Oct. 15.