Between 11–13 April, NATO HUMINT Centre of Excellence (HCOE) joined technology enthusiasts from the western region of Romania at a dedicated hackathon hosted by the Oradea Science and Technology Park. The event—HACKATHUSO, a 72-hour programming marathon—was organized by the Students’ Union of Oradea (USO), in collaboration with Transilvania IT Cluster, Make IT in Oradea, STEAM Park Oradea, the FAN Courier Foundation, and QubHQ.
HACKATHUSO provided an excellent venue to launch a new challenge proposed by HCOE: the IDLE TALKER CHATBOT. This initiative aims to support the development of an online training platform for practicing questioning skills – a critical competency across a wide range of professions involving human interaction. The platform may address challenges both in data and information collection or in responding to AI-generated questioning.
The HCOE challenge introduced a gamified investigative scenario, requiring the application of structured questioning sequences to resolve a simulated cybersecurity incident. The concept was enthusiastically adopted by FluxDev, a team of undergraduate students from the University of Oradea. The team members included Vlad Chiș (Project Management, Backend), a Computer Science student at the Faculty of Informatics and Sciences; Joshua Ghiurău (UI/UX) and Flavius Țenț (Backend API, AI), both students in Information Technology at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology; and Gabriele Fildan (AI Testing, Frontend), a student in Computer Engineering at the same faculty.
Based on the challenge, the team developed a rebranded platform – QUESTIFY – which integrates the features of a serious game, designed to provide an effective and engaging environment for professional questioning skills development, as originally intended by HCOE.
We warmly congratulate FluxDev for their innovative approach and technical proficiency, which earned them first place in the hackathon!