CS Students Take on MHacks and PennApps

Over Martin Luther King weekend, Terrapins of all ages and skill levels converged upon two of the biggest and most prestigious and high-profile hackathons in the country. These hackathons, namely the University of Pennsylvania's PennApps and the University of Michigan's MHacks, are two of the oldest and best known student-run hackathons. Each draws in over a thousand hackers from across the country (and world) for their biannual competitions, not to mention plenty of interest from preeminent tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. As a result, both have had to adopt increasingly strict application procedures in recent years in order to handle exploding interest from the Computer Science community.

Needless to say, this new application process has not held Maryland's hackathon goers back. “PennApps is a great place to be” says Kunal Sharma, president of the Terrapin Hackers and 3-time PennApps attendee. “It seems like almost everyone in the hacker community goes to either PennApps or MHacks.” Sharma's team, which had two other Terrapins and an international student from Amsterdam, developed a “care package delivery system” for recovering from inconvenient situations, like a forgotten notebook before class or important date.

Maryland's teams and attendees produced a wide range of projects and ideas, spanning from virtual immersion with the Oculus Rift and the Thalmic Myo to applications and frameworks for program distribution and sharing. One such project at PennApps was 'Speech to Scene' by Shariq Hashme, Benjamen Cohen, and Lee Avital. 'Speech to Scene' applied voice recognition algorithms to a virtual reality sandbox, allowing the user to describe a scene to be rendered. Another, presented at MHacks by Wajahat Siddiqui, Richard Higgins, Alejandro Newell, and Jonathan Lockwood was 'Paybaq,' a “personal mobster” app that sends reminders to friends who owe you money.

PennApps XI and MHacks V have passed, but the next season (XII and VI) is just around the corner. If you have a curious mind and are interested in joining a vibrant community of thinkers and makers, PennApps and MHacks are terrific places to start. For the less patient and more driven hacker, Maryland's second annual Bitcamp is already taking applications for April, with over 1000 expected to attend. In the meantime, the Terrapin Hackers are hosting “hacktorials,” which provide brief introductions to topics like web development, Android apps, and virtual reality to help prospective hackers get up to speed on the latest technologies and techniques. These events can really help  “prepare you to do any hack you want,” says Sharma. With the hackathon scene and community growing at breakneck pace, there's never been a better time to test your coding skills and hack your way to the top.