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Student teams tackle tech industry challenges at PatriotHacks 2023

Teresa Donnellan — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 19:05:36 +0000

Student teams tackle tech industry challenges at PatriotHacks 2023 Teresa Donnellan Fri, 10/13/2023 - 15:05

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Kamaljeet Sanghera

Liza Wilson Durant

More than 500 students, nine sponsors, and 50 volunteers gathered on ��AV’s Fairfax Campus for the fifth annual PatriotHacks hackathon from October 6–8. After working for 36 hours straight, student teams presented 70 projects to a panel of judges and received feedback and prizes.

“Each year, PatriotHacks continues to grow, and students accept the challenge and create truly innovative projects to fulfill the various tracks. The level of technological innovation seen in this one weekend is proof of the caliber of research, work, and experience at ��AV,” said event organizer Kamaljeet Sanghera, executive director of Mason’s Institute for Digital Innovation and a professor of information sciences and technology. She added, “We are very grateful to our sponsors for their contributions. Their support is critical to both the success of this event and the work we do at Mason.”

People at the Amazon Web Services workshop. Photo by Kamaljeet Sanghera

Student organizers worked tirelessly to make the event a success. Computer science major Krishna Purohit, who was in charge of sponsor outreach, noted this year’s event yielded more than triple the number of submitted projects than last year’s hackathon. “We're excited to scale the hackathon and make it one of the largest in Virginia,” he said.

Student teams designed solutions for problems presented by event sponsors, such as Peraton, Amazon, Special Competitive Studies Project–SCSP, Arcfield, GEICO, Salesforce, and the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) NoVa Node.

"CCI NoVa Node is making significant investments in hands-on cybersecurity experiences for the tech talent pipeline in the [Northern Virginia] region,” said Liza Wilson Durant, associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement and director of the Northern Virginia Node of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI). “Events like PatriotHacks are an important way to build technical capacity in students, share innovative ideas across disciplines, and support the development of the diverse pipeline of talent we are cultivating in Northern Virginia."

Mason students Akhil Rachure, Sai Kumar Kattera, Sai Preethi Pantangi, and Kevlar Nalankilli joined forces for the hackathon; their team won two tracks, hosted by Peraton and Salesforce, respectively, with two different projects.

From left, Sai Preethi Pantangi, Akhil Rachure, Salesforce representative Brian Coughlin, Sai Kumar Kattera, and Kevlar Nalankilli. Photo by Akhil Rachure

“It was a grueling 36-hour marathon of brainstorming, coding, and innovation, and finally, all the hard work paid off,” said Rachure, who is majoring in data analytics engineering.

“PatriotHacks 2023 was special and different from other hackathons I’ve been to. There were lots of track options to choose from, including sponsored ones and Mason tracks, with experts around to help us out,” said Kattera, who is majoring in computer science. “We all worked together really well, and that’s the main reason we could build our product in just 36 hours. This experience taught me that with a strong team effort, anything is possible.”

The team won the Peraton track with their project, an application meant to help travelers plan safer trips.

“The app displays routes from point A to B and also highlights danger zones, helping users avoid potential crashes,” said Rachure.

The team won a track hosted by Salesforce with a related project. Pantangi, a computer science major, explained, “We leveraged Tableau to craft a comprehensive dashboard. This dashboard is designed to empower car companies with valuable insights into car crashes, categorized by model and body type.”

For students new to hackathons, PatriotHacks 2023 made a positive impression. Computer science major Nathan Albe, who won the Best Powered AI track with teammates Mohamed Shaik, Sanjay Mohan Kumar, and Sami Saifudin, said, “This was my first hackathon, and I can say it was a great first experience.... I felt like I learned how to effectively work toward a project and goal, not just by myself but in a team environment.”

Albe also said, “Thank you to all of the volunteers and sponsors at PatriotHacks for creating such a memorable event. I loved working with my team, and I learned so much. Can't wait for next year!”

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Registration Open: Mason’s TraCCC Launches Second Annual Hackathon to Fight Counterfeiters

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 15:07:37 +0000

Registration Open: Mason’s TraCCC Launches Second Annual Hackathon to Fight Counterfeiters Andrew J Schappert Wed, 08/30/2023 - 11:07

Registration is open for the second annual Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon, an event that brings together individuals and teams from around the country in a competition with a vital mission—to interrupt illicit counterfeiting and trafficking—and for a chance to win $50,000 in awards.

The Schar School of Policy and Government’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at ��AV is partnering with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Innovation Policy Center to challenge teams from academic institutions, companies, and other affiliations to design and propose novel technical and policy solutions that prevent counterfeit and pirated goods from entering the stream of commerce and reaching the hands of consumers. Strategy and analytic firm Blue Clarity returns to administer the competition.

Contestants will also be encouraged to create tools that help recognize the spoofing of official U.S. government websites, trademarks, and other services. The winning entry will win the grand prize of $20,000 for the solution a panel of expert judges select as the most effective, scalable, and creative. Other cash prizes will be awarded in a number of categories.

“Counterfeiting is a crime that affects us all. This hackathon will bring students together with policymakers, academic institutions, domain and private sector experts, and other professionals to raise awareness of the threats and generate powerful new ideas to stop this criminal activity,” said University Professor Louise Shelley, founding director of the TraCCC. “The results will also be used to inform our ongoing research on counterfeit and other criminal supply chain networks.”

This year, challenge organizers are looking for novel technical solutions, such as new technology to advance counterfeited product identification devices or advanced algorithms to secure supply chains and identify counterfeit goods. Solutions offered in the competition should have direct applicability to stated challenges that government agencies like the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and others are actively working to overcome. Last year’s winning entry, chosen from 11 finalists of 30 entries, was a search engine extension that exposed fraudulent pharmacies and disrupted the flow of counterfeit medicine in the U.S.

The contest is important—counterfeiting remains a persistent retail-industry problem around the world. Counterfeiters deprive brand owners of the value of their intellectual property, compete unfairly with honest entrepreneurs, and may place the health and safety of consumers at risk. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5 percent of world trade or roughly $464 billion a year.

This 2023 hackathon challenge launched in August and is open to anyone. Registration for the event is free.

See the Bring Down Counterfeiting 2023 Hackathon registration form for event for competition details and to register. Teams will have several weeks to learn more from an array of public and private-sector experts and stakeholders about the global scope of the counterfeiting challenge, the societal and economic risks, industry best practices, and more. Full hackathon rules, submission guidelines, and judging criteria can be found on the Bring Down Counterfeiting 2023 Hackathon registration form.

Interested in joining as a sponsor or getting involved? Please contact expeditionhacks@blueclarity.io. Stay informed via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.

Read Mason/Amazon hackathon is a win for Mason students for last year’s inaugural hackathon results.

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Louise I. Shelley

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Mason teams shine at three major hackathons

Teresa Donnellan — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 13:46:19 +0000

Mason teams shine at three major hackathons Teresa Donnellan Thu, 06/22/2023 - 09:46

The Mason Nation’s strength was undeniable at several hackathons in spring 2023. ��AV computer science, cybersecurity engineering, information technology, and mechanical engineering students won challenges on March 25 at the University of Virginia (UVA), on April 7-9 at the University of Maryland (UMD), and on April 29-30 at Drexel University.

What’s a hackathon?

Hackathons take place over a limited span of time, usually 24 hours. Teams comprising several students choose which “tracks” they want to compete in, with each track delineating a different challenge. Hackathons are generally free for participants, with travel, accommodation, and food provided, making them a relatively equitable opportunity for students.

At the outset of a hackathon, sponsoring or organizing bodies present on the different tracks and offer workshops on relevant tools for the challenges at hand. The events are thus valuable networking opportunities where participants meet not only industry professionals, but also like-minded entrepreneurial peers.

Over the course of the event, teams build a minimum viable product, submit their project through GitHub, and create a DevPost page to display their project before presenting to a panel of judges during an exhibition period. At the end of the event, prizes are awarded for many of the tracks.

HooHacks 2023 at the University of Virginia

HooHacks team. Photo provided

HooHacks, put on by a student group at the University of Virginia of the same name, comprises six levels of challenges and includes a special element sponsored by Fannie Mae. The event took place over 24 hours, starting at noon on March 25.

Two Mason teams, one comprising upperclassmen and one comprising freshmen, brought home wins including at least $500, respectively.

Seniors Jhonn Cardozo and Ronald Santos Garcia and junior Maya Crosby took home $500 and the pride of winning the primary challenge in one of the 50 biggest hackathons in the country. After being announced as winners, the team was approached by Fannie Mae staffers, who told them they were extremely impressed with their performance.

Snagging Best Overall prize at HooHacks was a team of Mason freshmen. Anthony Perry, Daniel Horvath, and Marco Zamora brought home more than $500 in prizes and an invitation to compete at Pinnacle, perhaps the most competitive collegiate hackathon worldwide. The team had been encouraged to participate in the event by their fellow Mason participants. Although only freshmen, the teammates had an existing relationship, as they had all been on a robotics team in high school.

The team’s project, Dangerous Audio Detection (DAD), is an Alarm System Network that uses machine learning algorithms to accurately identify the sound of gunshots and alerts community members.

“The idea for our project, DAD, stemmed from our desire to answer [Mason President] Gregory Washington’s call to solve the grand challenges in our world,” the team said.

“We are especially excited about participating in Pinnacle, often referred to as the Olympics of collegiate-level hackathons, as we have received a prestigious invitation. This experience has solidified our commitment to continuous learning and participation in hackathons as a means to push our boundaries and contribute to our community’s grand challenges,” the team said.

Bitcamp at the University of Maryland

The BitTales team. Photo provided

An undergraduate and a graduate team garnered acclaim at the University of Maryland’s Bitcamp hackathon, the largest collegiate hackathon on the east coast. The event had five primary tracks, varying from machine learning to quantum computing, and included more than 1,000 students, packed into the Xfinity Center on the College Park campus.

The upperclassmen team from HooHacks—with the addition of Mason alum Katherine Horvath, a information technology graduate and freshman Daniel’s sister—was one of two teams to win awards in two different challenges, including taking first in the Bloomberg Industry Group challenge. The Bloomberg project involved using any public/government data to showcase a specific application highlighting data insights and intelligence. The team’s solution elicited praise from Bloomberg representatives, with the sponsors noting how impressed they were with the product.

A team of international graduate students studying computer science also won two tracks with their project BitTales, a natural language processing-based web application that turns meaningful conversations into personalized bedtime stories. Master’s students Janit Bidhan and Aabha Bothera and doctoral candidate Saurabh Srivastava won both the Best Use of CockroachDB Serverless and the Best Machine Learning Hack awards at the event, bringing home more than $400 in prize money.

DragonHacks 2023 at Drexel University.

Perfect Application for Plant Assistance (PAPA) team. Photo provided

Two members of the victorious HooHacks 2023 freshmen team, Daniel Horvath and Anthony Perry, joined a member of the successful upperclassmen team from the same event, Jhonn Dalton Cardozo, to participate in DragonHacks 2023 at Drexel University. The hybrid team won Best Environmental Hack for their project Perfect Application for Plant Assistance (PAPA). The project “aimed to help solve food insecurities through encouraging sustainable botany practices,” said Horvath and Perry. Mason’s Patriot Pantry inspired the team to use competition as a means of incentivizing efforts to end food insecurity, the team wrote in the project description.

“Our decision to pursue the best environmental hack track at Dragon Hacks stemmed from a desire to explore new territories, engage in a hardware–software integration project, and the enticing prospect of winning some TVs,” Cardozo recalled. “But beyond the prizes, our team was fueled by a genuine commitment to make a difference and create a solution that would contribute to the well-being of the environment.”

Reflections on Three Hackathons

Jhonn Dalton Cardozo gleaned lessons from his experience in each of these hackathons.

“During the UVA hackathon, I discovered that teamwork is the backbone of any successful project,” he noted.

“At Bitcamp, I realized that commitment and dedication to a project can take you far,” he added.

“At Dragon Hacks, the importance of team management became even more apparent,” he said. “Having a talented team is fantastic, but knowing how to leverage their strengths and expertise is the real key to success. Recognizing the value of different perspectives, interests, and potential within each team member was a crucial aspect of creating our final project. While this might sound like common knowledge, I never fully appreciated the challenge and gratification of managing a team while doing the actual work. I am truly grateful for the exceptional group of individuals in my team and deeply appreciate their efforts in bringing our collective vision to life.”

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This graduating engineer is an inventor at heart

Colleen Rich — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 16:01:45 +0000

This graduating engineer is an inventor at heart Colleen Rich Mon, 12/05/2022 - 11:01

Senior Sai Srivatsav Gutala has been busy during his time at ��AV, and he has a lot of big ideas.

Inventor Sai Srivatsav Gutala is graduating with a BS in electrical engineering. Photo by Cristian Torres/Strategic Communications

In 2019, as a sophomore, the electrical engineering major started a student club called the Inventors and Innovations Team (IIT) with one of his classmates, computer engineering major Nicholas Paschke.

“We wanted to give students an opportunity to build whatever it is that tickles their mind,” he said of the club that still meets in the makerspace at the Mason Innovation Exchange (MIX) in Horizon Hall on the Fairfax Campus. “As long as it's reasonable and innovative, we agreed to it and tried to create it. Since IIT started, our vision has been to have multiple teams working on building different projects at the same time.”

Current IIT projects include a fire-detecting drone that could help with wildfires and a sensing cane for the visually impaired. Some ideas will fail, but this doesn’t bother Gutala, who graduates with a bachelor of science this month. It is the ideas themselves and the execution that interest him.

As he approached his senior year, Gutala wanted to take things to the next level and founded the hardware hackathon, HackOverflow.

“Its purpose was all about giving students the hands-on opportunity to create something grand,” said Gutala, who recently served as the chair of HackOverflow’s executive committee and is now an advisor.

They partnered with an existing hackathon at Mason, Patriot Hacks, and Mason’s Institute of Digital Innovation's executive director Kammy Sanghera. The event took place in March 2022 at the MIX.

While many hackathons focus on coding, HackOverflow had students using the MIX’s 3D printer, soldering station, and other equipment to create prototypes of their ideas. Gutala said it is one of only a handful of hardware hackathons in the country.

“Throughout the process, Sai ensured that participants of HackOverflow had the resources and mentors to design prototypes,” said Sanghera. “From building his executive team to seeking sponsorships for the event, Sai was professional and diligent. Through initiatives like IIT and HackOverflow, Sai generated opportunities for his peers to change the world positively.”

Gutala has also started a company called Alphawave and has been one of the student entrepreneurs in the MIX’s incubator space. With Alphawave, Gutala is developing appearance-customizable apparel. He began with footwear—and he already has a prototype—but Gutala sees this as the beginning of using technology to customize personal items for self-expression.

Through the incubator program, Gutala was able to have his own space within the MIX and use of the program’s professional development resources, such as the mini Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program (ICAP) program offered to Mason student entrepreneurs. Gutala said he found the mini “the most helpful thing ever.”

“ICAP focuses on finding your ideal customer that will be loyal to your company,” said Gutala. “If a business can understand their customer, everything else is easy.”

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2022 Annual Hackathon

Wasiq Muhammad Muhammad Ali — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 19:29:39 +0000

2022 Annual Hackathon Wasiq Muhammad… Fri, 10/07/2022 - 15:29

On October 1, Honors College Connects (HCC) held its second annual Hackathon. The Hackathon is an opportunity for students to come up with creative solutions to issues that various local nonprofit organizations face. This year’s participating nonprofits included:

Annandale Christian Community for Action, a church-affiliated voluntary organization assisting low-income families in the Annandale/Bailey’s Crossroads area;
Shelter House, a domestic violence shelter;
League of Women Voters Fairfax, a nonpartisan voter participation organization;
NV Rides, a network of volunteers providing personal transportation to seniors;

Sustainable Mason President’s Park Greenhouse, an organization that provides fresh produce to the ��AV community;
Latino Economic Development Center, an organization that provides financial education to Latino & other underserved communities.

The students also enjoyed a catered lunch together and took group photos.

First-time Honors student participant Farhan Babar worked with Sustainable Mason, creating marketing material to promote their free produce options. He recounts one challenge his team encountered: “We tried doing so many things all at once that we ended up becoming separated. We weren’t even able to finish most of the things we were trying to do individually.” Despite the challenges of working in a large, ambitious team, Babar says that he enjoyed getting to know other Honors College students that day.

Sebastian Rodionov, another newcomer to the Hackathon, worked with NV Rides to create an advertisement campaign persuading recent retirees to become volunteer drivers for local seniors. He shares that for his team, “generally speaking, we did not run into any challenges at the Hackathon. I provided ideas and bounced them to other members for feedback. Our team also had a professional graphic designer who created a gorgeous Facebook post/sample flyer from scratch.” For Rodionov, “the best part of the Hackathon was seeing the end products of all the other groups and reflecting on all we accomplished that day.”

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TraCCC and Amazon team up for policy hackathon to stop counterfeiters

Colleen Rich — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 16:18:35 +0000

TraCCC and Amazon team up for policy hackathon to stop counterfeiters Colleen Rich Fri, 08/05/2022 - 12:18

In This Story

Louise I. Shelley

��AV’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) and Amazon have joined forces to help combat counterfeiting and its criminal supply chain networks.

The method? Co-hosting the 2022 Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon, a first-of-its-kind event, administered by Blue Clarity, that will challenge teams from U.S. academic institutions, companies and other affiliations to develop innovative ideas to combat these global challenges.

Registration opened August 5 ahead of an August 27 virtual kickoff event. An in-person final judging will be on November 5, when teams will compete for more than $20,000 in prizes. Go to expeditionhacks.com/counterfeiting for details and to register.

“Our goal is to bring together U.S. policy makers, domain experts, and academic institutions to raise awareness of the threats and generate powerful new ideas to stop this criminal activity,” said TraCCC Director Louise Shelley, a University Professor in the Schar School. “We are excited to have Amazon as a partner in this initial event and we appreciate their leadership in fostering a culture of open cooperation and innovation. The results from this hackathon will also be used to inform our ongoing research on counterfeit and other criminal supply chain networks.”

As ideas are developed, teams will be able to engage real-time with a diverse group of mentors from across the public and private sectors, including Edward Huang, a member of TraCCC and an associate professor in Mason's College of Engineering and Computing.

“Mason is taking on these global challenges that we must confront as humanity,” Mason alum Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of global innovation policy and communications, said in April at the groundbreaking for the Fuse building at Mason Square in Arlington.

“The fact is, Mason is not just a pipeline for tech talent,” Shelley said. “We have a unique perspective that Amazon sought out, which is to place tech in context to inform policy. This makes Mason different from other tech programs, and is what brought Amazon to us in the first place.”

The hackathon continues and expands Mason’s partnership with Amazon.

The Fuse building is part of a large-scale expansion at Mason Square. Scheduled to open in 2025, it will be a 345,000-square-foot facility that will serve as a technological hub in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, connecting students, faculty, industry, and government.

The campus, which is adjacent to Amazon’s new headquarters, is part of Mason’s commitment to expanding its programs in computer science, computer engineering, information technology and other closely related fields to rapidly increase the number of highly skilled graduates for Amazon and other regional employers.

Mason also just completed a collaboration with Amazon and the Maryland Chamber Foundation in a program that provided current and potential computer science teachers in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. with an opportunity to shadow Amazon experts and take a companion three-credit, graduate-level class at Mason. That program is now funded by Google.

“Mason’s partnership with Amazon to curate real-world experiential learning initiatives like the TraCCC hackathon positions Mason students as some of the best-trained, work-ready talent pipelines in the nation,” said Liza Wilson Durant, Mason’s associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement. “This event not only supports our students’ professional development, but will lead to impactful solutions to a challenging real-world threat.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5% (roughly $464 billion) a year in world trade. Counterfeiters deprive brand owners of the value of their intellectual property and compete unfairly with honest entrepreneurs. The supply chains of counterfeiters may also intersect with transnational networks in a wide range of illicit behavior, including illegal trade in narcotics, arms, people, and wildlife.

“Amazon is known for its customer obsession, and a critical part of that is earning and maintaining our customers’ trust,” said Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of brand protection at Amazon. “While we are proud of the progress we have made, we will not stop until we drive counterfeits to zero in our store, and we will continue to invest and innovate until we get there.”

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36 hours of innovation: Two hackathons at Mason inspire students to dream big

Mariam Aburdeineh — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 17:25:31 +0000

36 hours of innovation: Two hackathons at Mason inspire students to dream big Mariam Aburdeineh Mon, 02/28/2022 - 12:25

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Kamaljeet Sanghera

HackOverFlow's Presidential Committee. Back row from left to right: Siddharth Veluvolu and Sai Srivatsav Gutala. Front row from left to right: Nicholas Paschke, Abegail Aquiro, and Josh Merriman. Photo provided.

There’s no shortage of creativity at ��AV, and from March 11-13, students will accelerate innovation at the university’s annual hackathon. This year, two events will take place simultaneously: PatriotHacks, the signature hackathon focused on software programming, and HackOverFlow, a new hackathon with a focus on hardware engineering.

“PatriotHacks…has been drawing hundreds of students to a 36-hour hackathon for the last three years,” said Kammy Sanghera, executive director of Mason’s Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA). “With the addition of HackOverFlow, we will be able to extend the opportunity to students who want to create prototypes or work on hardware solutions.”

"Robot Spider." An example of a hardware project students could create at HackOverFlow.

That could include robotics, wearable devices, or anything with a mechanical component, said Sai Srivatsav Gutala, a member of HackOverFlow’s presidential committee.

“My long-term vision for HackOverFlow is to have students come in with crazy ideas, no matter how big, no matter how impossible the world may think they are,” said Gutala, a senior studying electrical engineering.

The hackathons, hosted by IDIA’s TechConnect DC, will be held in Horizon Hall. College students of any major, from any institution, and recent graduates, are welcome to register individually or in teams.

PatriotHacks will also be in hybrid format this year, with online and in-person participation.

Both events are about fostering innovation and solving challenges, the students said, but you don’t have to be an expert to join.

Jared Ponmakha. Photo provided.

“If you’ve ever had an idea for a project but didn’t know how or where to start, this event is the catalyst to make your idea into reality,” said Jared Ponmakha, a senior studying computer science, and one of PatriotHacks’ directors. “Students benefit by being given the technical resources and mentorships to idealize their projects fully.”

In addition to the hackathon itself, there will be workshops, talks and social events, the students said, including a resume-building workshop and a Mario Kart tournament.

Participating also has career advantages, Gutala said, mentioning that sponsors and representatives from tech companies will be in attendance.

“Submitting projects gives students the ability to show the sponsors what they learned at the event,” Ponmakha said. “[The hackathons] give more personable job opportunities than a standard career fair.”

“It is a professional development opportunity for our students where they are not bound by grading criteria,” Sanghera said. “It allows them to think outside the box, be creative, and be confident to ask questions as they seek solutions for local, regional, or global issues.”

Prizes are another incentive.

“We offer 10 tracks to earn prizes, including ‘Most Likely to be a Startup’ to ‘Best Hardware Hack,’” said Ponmakha. “Prizes include fast tracks to internships and even a hacker goodie bag.”

The leadership team from both hackathons said they’re excited for what’s the come.

“There’s no greater feeling than working on a product you’ve been pouring your sweat and tears into,” Gutala said. “That happiness inspires us to give more opportunity to students so they can work on problems and create solutions that could be used in the real world.”

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Addressing Nonprofit Challenges: Honors College Connects Hosts Its First-ever Hackathon

Daniel Hyunbin Chung — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 15:56:51 +0000

Addressing Nonprofit Challenges: Honors College Connects Hosts Its First-ever Hackathon Daniel Hyunbin Chung Tue, 11/16/2021 - 10:56

Two dozen Honors College students and four hours on a Saturday is a recipe for great new ideas, as demonstrated at Honors College Connects’ first-ever Nonprofit Hackathon. This event brought three local and one international nonprofit into a space with motivated student volunteers, who participated in a rapid-fire guided challenge in human-centered design – making and testing rapid prototypes with an eye towards creating user-friendly ideas. Over the course of the day, the students bonded with each other, networked with their nonprofit partner, addressed challenges with brilliant creativity, and had fun giving back to the community.

 Honors College Connects (HCC) is a student-led program that connects students with local nonprofits, giving them the opportunity to gain valuable professional experience and develop leadership skills. According to HCC student leader Elizabeth Fortson, the main goal of the HNRS 261 Honors College Connects class is "to work with nonprofit partners to solve some kind of strategic question that the nonprofit has."

Some of these questions can take multiple weeks or months of brainpower and teamwork to tackle, but the Hackathon sought to tackle something different. Rather than taking a whole semester, the Hackathon gave one day to solving smaller topics. 

In addition to creating a space to solve these smaller topics, the event reached students who are not able to participate in the semester-long HCC classroom experience. Brandon Roca, another student leader, noted that, “as a leadership team we saw a need for [these] students to get more involved and see what human centered design is all about.”  

Drawing on the multidisciplinary strengths of the Honors College's learning community, HCC is able to take on projects that do not fit neatly in a single discipline or field. Fortson says of this that “many of these problems aren’t in the realm of something a government major or a biology major would focus on… so having all these different multidisciplinary students brings a lot of different perspectives in terms of what we should do, how we should do it, why it would work, why it wouldn’t work.”

The morning of the Hackathon, students had four hours to rapidly respond to the issues the four nonprofits faced. The nonprofits featured in Fall 2021 were FACETS, Dulles Area Transportation Association (DATA), the Starfish Foundation, and Veterans Moving Forward. FACETS serves individuals and families who are homeless, low-income, or at-risk in Fairfax County, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; DATA finds solutions to transportation issues faced in the Dulles area and promotes sustainable transportation options; the Starfish Foundation provides means for at-risk Ecuadorian youth to achieve post-secondary education and strives to empower these students; and Veterans Moving Forward provides service dogs and canine therapy services to veterans with physical and/or mental health challenges at no cost to the veteran.

Roca remarked that the rapid-fire format of a Hackathon gave the nonprofit partners chances to benefit by the "multiple perspectives" that Honors College students bring to the table. At the event, students helped the nonprofits with a range of changes, including logo design, public relations, outreach to different demographics, and evaluation of innovative programs.

The impact of the Hackathon was significant. The nonprofits involved were able to take the student-designed ideas and apply them to their own operations. Fortson noted that her favorite part of the Hackathon was watching the lively energy of the event, which was characterized by students running around and solving problems, resulting in amazing, fully-developed ideas that came from that chaos in a very short period of time.

Roca says that the HCC class will spend the rest of the semester working on some bigger projects for these same nonprofits - the kind that are not solved in a day. Honors College Connects plans to offer a Hackathon each Fall semester moving forward, extending the reach of the program and encouraging students who are not in the Honors College Connects classes to make an impact.

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Practicing professionalism prepares students for success

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 19:16:34 +0000

Practicing professionalism prepares students for success Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 15:16

Engineering and technology college courses cover the problem-solving skills successful students will need in their careers. But what those courses don’t always cover is how to get a job.

Ximena Perez hopes to help her fellow SHPE members learn about networking and the career opportunities it opens up. Photo provided.

For senior computer science major and Honors College student Ximena Perez, she found her community in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) as a member, president, and now as vice president of the student organization.

Perez, who was born in Peru and moved to Virginia when she was 3-years-old, came to Mason because of its proximity to home and its affordability. Her freshman year, she knew she wanted to join Latino organizations, and she found SHPE through connections with former executive board members.

“I gained a lot of mentors when I joined,” says Perez. “It was super awesome to see and learn from fellow engineering students.”

One important lesson Perez learned from her mentors and hopes to bring to current members is the value of professionalism. At her first SHPE annual conference in fall 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio, the organization's professional development side resonated. “The conference was overwhelming but exciting, there’s a huge career fair with recruiters from big-name companies, and I realized there’s a whole world of networking opportunities out there,” says Perez.

And Perez dove in. She sought out opportunities to test her skills and get recognized. One avenue she found was hackathons. “I completed a few hackathons in the last couple of years, like Mason’s Patriot Hacks and Georgetown’s Hoya Hacks,” she says. “At Hoya Hacks, I got to work with students from different schools to create an interactive app for DACA recipients. It was great to meet new people and work on something I was passionate about.”

These types of events are gold mines for building your network and testing your skills, says Perez. And her goal as a leader of SHPE has been to illustrate their value.

While Perez feels her computer science education has provided the foundation for developing her technical skill, SHPE helped her learn how to build her brand and pitch her skills to recruiters. “What you learn in classes prepares you for what you’re doing, but SHPE helps with actually getting the job.”

Marrying her two skills together, Perez feels prepared to enter the workforce after her graduation in May. “My time at Mason has taught me so much—in my courses, in SHPE, and in the Honors College, I’ve been given all of the tools I need.”

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