Nearly 300 students representing 67 colleges and universities from around the country participated in the Department of Computer Science’s first virtual hackathon “HopHacks,” held September 11 through 13. The online competition received 72 project submissions, the most ever received by the hackathon.
Held biannually, the 36-hour student-run hackathon is typically held on JHU’s Homewood Campus; but due to COVID-19 was reorganized to an online platform.
“I was surprised when we got so many submissions, typically, we see around 40 submissions,” said HopHacks Co-Director, Brandon Wong. Wong, a junior biomedical engineering, computer science, and applied math and statistics major, said that the increased submissions likely had to do with the hackathon being online this year. “People who attend a virtual hackathon would typically attend to create a winning hack rather than for the other benefits that an in-person hackathon would normally have,” said Wong.
Amber Zhou, computer science and applied math major, said the virtual experience provided more opportunities for participation than ever before, making it a big hit among the hackers. “A major highlight of the HopHacks virtual event was the wide access it offered to people all over the world because we were not constrained by the transportation and logistics issues we used to have with the in-person event,” said Zhou, who assisted with HopHacks event logistics.
A team of four first-year students took home the winning prize of $1,024. Their project “Summaread” is an advanced AI tool that automatically generates lecture notes and key topics from transcripts, and imports them into a PDF. To learn more about Summaread, click here.
Winners took home more than $4,000 in sponsored prizes. To view the HopHacks livestream, click here.