UGA Hacks Turns X: School of Computing’s 48 Hour Annual Coding Event

Earlier in February, UGA’s School of Computing club, UGAHacks, hosted the 10^th annual Hackathon. The Hackathon took place over 48 hours beginning Feb. 8 in the Zell B. Miller Learning Center. 

This year’s theme was Rock n’ Roll and hackers were encouraged to think outside of the box and embrace the spirit of innovation in unconventional ways. The event showed the community of driven individuals here at UGA as there were 12 sponsors, over 500 passionate participants and 150 innovative project submissions.  

Those in attendance were exposed to professional networking activities, all day-coding and the ability to build a community of driven individuals.

“I have met some of my closest friends at UGA Hacks events that have helped and encouraged me through all of my computer science classes,” said UGA School of Computing student, Julian Phan. “I am also an organizer for UGA Hacks, where I get to meet so many different students, whether they are just beginning their programming journey or are advanced.”

Large, well-known companies including Truist were in attendance for the 48-hour event. The winners of the Truist Challenges include: Rohit Rao, Vaishali Prahalad, Kevin Xiang, Mukil Sundaravadivel, Jessie Cai, Erica Lin, Sprihanjay Banik and WinterCherri Nguyen. 

Not only does the event foster a strong community in the School of Computing and networking events, but it fosters healthy competition. This year there were lots of winners across platforms, grades and more.

The best overall project award went to the Talkstar team, which included Sam Peters, Rhett Pilcher and Amir Alinejad. The best AI project went to team Medmonitor, which included Jay Roy, Christian Hirschey, Gavin Ward and Brandon Kantorski.

More information on the teams and winners can be found here. 

Each opportunity at this year’s Hackathon provided Hackers with coding skill development and increased knowledge in the field of computing. We can’t wait to see what next year’s Hackathon has in store.

Image: A team from the 10th annual UGA Hackathon. (Photo byAbigail Jean Neises)