Community Roundup: Changing the future of Data Science, Security, Education, and Society
Reaching Across the Fields at DandyHacks
Data science and computer science aren’t the same thing. But they’re sort of in the same band. And like talented bandmates, they tend to inspire each other to push their limits and achieve new breakthroughs.
This collaborative relationship inspired the theme of DandyHacks 2018. Participants at the University of Rochester’s fourth-annual 36 hour hackathon were invited to combine data science and computer science in novel, exciting ways. Almost 200 hackers gathered from February 16 to 18th on the U of R campus, chowing down on bagels and Indian food, watching robotics demos, and brainstorming innovations that intertwined data and computing.
For example, first place winner DataChain aims to break scientific research free of restrictive fee-based journal conventions with an open access system based around blockchain technology. Meanwhile, Salt-o-Meter takes a more playful approach to data analysis, using the sentiment analysis capabilities of TextBlob to rank GroupMe chat participants by their “saltiness.” Folks wanna know!
Other participants swerved from the theme with the imagination and wit characteristic of great hackathons. Take Hack Attack, a “half-finished” game that requires users to code their way to victory. Organizer Edan Meyer was a big fan, calling it “the most unique take I’ve seen on a game about programming” because “not only does to code affect the game, the game can also affect the code you can write.”
Among all the successes of DandyHacks, Meyer was most happy that DandyHacks was able to reach down the road and connect the U of R hacker community with fellow code warriors at the Rochester Institute of Technology. A unique theme that inspires and challenges is a great way for hackathons to entice participation from far and wide, and we can’t wait to see what DandyHacks comes up with next year!
Keeping the World Secure (And Helping It Remember Its Lines!) At Hack@CEWIT
Crack open the news on any given day, and you don’t have to search too far to find a story about tech security. As the number of devices hooked up to the Internet increases, security concerns also ramp up. That’s why Hack@CEWIT decided to dedicate their 2018 hackathon to the timely combo of “Internet of Things and Security.”
With an opportunity to compete for over $7k in prizes and meet “fellow hackers and gurus,” around 200 hackers spent their February 16–18 weekend at Stony Brook University for the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT)’s relevant and rewarding event.
After waking up to sunrise bagels, hackers enjoyed a wide menu of workshop topics on everything from artificial intelligence to blockchain to 3D printing. This variety helped inspire a variety of projects, as well, like Park-Detect, which uses Raspberry Pis and machine learning algorithms to help users detect early signs of Parkinson’s Disease.
The winner for Most Original at Hack@CEWIT was SoliloQuack, an innovative web app designed to help solitary actors — or anyone who has to rehearse alone for a big speech! Users upload their script, then perform it into a microphone. Using jQuery and a Javascript text-to-speech API, the web app not only shows percentages of correct and missed words, it also warns users of “synonyms they have confused with the script.” After all, the memory needs security too!
Interdisciplinary hackathons like Hack@CEWIT are a great way to bring hackers together for solutions and techniques that one hacker alone might’ve never thought of. We love the spirit of collaboration and the dedication to real-world problems at Hack@CEWIT, and we can’t wait to see what they do in 2019!
Taking Hold of the Future at Hacklahoma
You can either happen to the future, or you can let the future happen to you. One of the things we love the most about the spirit of hackathons is that it’s all about up-and-coming coders taking initiative.
That’s why we’re big fans of Hacklahoma’s mission — as described by organizer John Tran — to “take Oklahoma education in the students’ hands.” Hosted at the Devon Energy Hall on the University of Oklahoma campus by the school’s Student Chapter Association for Computing Machinery, the first annual Hacklahoma took place across March 3rd and 4th, with over 250 students from around the globe swooping in, eager to invent their futures.
Hacklahoma covered their bases on great supporting events, with daytime workshops on entrepreneurship and evening yoga sessions. This combination of inspiration and self-care helped spark some great ideas, like SimU, one of organizer John Tran’s favorite projects from the hackathon. “It’s like SimCity, but with a university,” Tran explained.
Other projects, like Study Buddy, kept up the theme of students taking their education into their own hands, offering “a concise run-down of upcoming assignments and tests” for output by Amazon Alexa.
The first Hacklahoma did a great job showing off Oklahoma’s potential as an up-and-coming tech hub. Put this one on your list for next year and if you want to join a bright, talented, and passionate community ready to “achieve the impossible!”
Big Pizza Slices and Big Social Challenges at HopHacks
Is there ever a bad time for pizza? Midnight pizza is a delicious tradition at HopHacks, the Johns Hopkins University biannual hackathon that draws participants from universities in Baltimore and beyond.
Between February 16th and 18th, a whopping 330 hackers ate a lot of midnight pizza, played in Smash tournaments, and took breaks from coding up a storm to attend workshops on popular topics like how to design a cryptocurrency.
All that cheesy fuel led to some great projects, like Stell.AR Speller, an augmented reality app designed to tackle the global issue of illiteracy. Did you know that 1 in 10 people are functionally illiterate? To combat this problem, Stell.AR Speller leverages the Vuforia — an AR platform natively supported within Unity — to overlay 3D data visualizations atop images of letters, helping users retain knowledge of the alphabet by associating the letters with recognizable images.
Service-oriented projects were everywhere at HopHacks, with first place going to Mediblock, an app that endeavors to level the playing field of medical costs by allowing patient-customers to upload photos of their bill and compare them to fair/common prices across the industry.
The range and depth of projects at HopHacks demonstrate why this JHU event is a premier hackathon, and we’re sure their continued success in 2018 will only pave the way — maybe with pepperoni stepping stones? — for more success to come!
