WELCOME TO HACKPRINCETON SPRING 2024
At HackPrinceton, you'll meet fellow hackers from around the world, learn new skills, and work alongside seasoned mentors. We'll have free workshops, lecture series, mentorship, prizes, games, and more. Don't have a team or even an idea? Don't worry! We'll give you the tools to build something incredible.
For 36 hours from November 10th to November 12th in-person on Princeton University's campus, you'll have the opportunity to collaborate and build out brilliant, innovative, and impactful ideas.
Our Tracks for this semester's Hackathon:
Education
These projects increase access to educational resources, facilitate learning in the classroom, or generally make acquiring knowledge a more engaging process. Hacks submitted to this category can range from all-encompassing edtech solutions to projects that bring awareness to a specific topic.
Healthcare
These projects take on public health challenges, combat health disparities, or assist with maintaining personal wellness. Hacks submitted to this category can range from digital archives of public health information to apps that track the fitness data of an individual user.
Environment
These projects use technology to preserve ecological ecosystems or promote sustainable lifestyles. Hacks submitted to this category can range from sweeping solutions to pertinent environmental crises to apps that encourage small sustainable habits.
Requirements
1. You must submit a link to your project's public GitHub repository created between March 29, 2024 - March 31, 2024
2. You MAY submit an OPTIONAL video demo that does not exceed 2 minutes in length. Remember to leave time to upload your video to YouTube/any other platform and add the link to your video to your Devpost submission. Note: In-person demos will be required on Sunday, see below!
3. Judging will be from 9:30am-11am on Sunday, March 31. Hackers will be expected to present their finished work in front of the judges during this time period. You must prepare for a presentation explaining/demoing your project to the judges that does not exceed 2 minutes in length, even if you attached a video to your project. Your presentation should clearly indicate the problem your hack attempts to solve and a walkthrough of your hack’s functionality.
Please add your Discord usernames to your submission so we can contact you if you win a prize!
Prizes
Best Overall
Each team member (up to 4) will win an Xbox Series S and split 10000 dollars of AWS credit! The top 3 teams (each member) will also receive a winner pin from MLH.
Best Beginner
Each team member (up to 4) will win a JBL Flip 6!
Best Education Hack -- Track Prize
Each team member (up to 4) will receive a Kindle!
NOTE: You can only opt-in to ONE of the track prize categories (education, healthcare, or environment).
Best Healthcare Hack -- Track Prize
Each team member (up to 4) will receive a Fitbit!
NOTE: You can only opt-in to ONE of the track prize categories (education, healthcare, or environment).
Best Environment Hack -- Track Prize
Each team member (up to 4) will receive a Philips UV Water Bottle!
NOTE: You can only opt-in to ONE of the track prize categories (education, healthcare, or environment).
Best Use of AI & Verbwire API
Goes to teams who use AI and the Verbwire API in building applications. Feel free to use MagicPilot.ai by Verbwire to build web3 programs using AI.
Most Innovative Use Of Verbwire
Most Creative Adobe Express Add-On
Wacom Wireless Drawing Tablet & JBL Go3 Speaker
Adobe Express is an AI-first, all-in-one content creation app that makes it fast, easy and fun to design and share videos, images, PDFs, flyers, TikToks, logos and more. Best of all, it’s free to get started.
Add-ons in Adobe Express are simply extensions and integrations that are built upon very powerful APIs. These APIs provide access to the user’s document, connections to third-party tools, and so much more. You can extend the functionality of Adobe Express using add-ons to unlock new capabilities and workflows. Check out these add-ons to see what other cool ideas developers have implemented!
For this hackathon, we want you to build a creative add-on for Adobe Express. Users are looking for add-ons that involve assets like stickers or icons, work with presentations and data visualization, and work in roles like marketing and e-commerce. Build an Adobe Express add-on this weekend for a chance to win a Wacom Wireless Drawing Tablet and JBL Go3 Speaker for you and each member of your team!
*You can also submit to this prize category if you have a prototype idea for an add-on or have a partially completed add-on. As long as you’ve built with Adobe Express, we want to see your hack!
Best Use of MongoDB Atlas
M5GO IoT Starter Kit
MongoDB Atlas takes the leading modern database and makes it accessible in the cloud! Get started with a $50 credit for students or sign up for the Atlas free forever tier (no credit card required). Along with a suite of services and functionalities, you'll have everything you need to manage all of your data, and you can get a headstart with free resources from MongoDB University! Build a hack using MongoDB Atlas for a chance to win a M5GO IoT Starter Kit for you and each member of your team.
Best Use of Auth0
Wireless Headphones & Battery Pack
Auth0 wants your applications to be secure! Why spend hours building features like social sign-in, Multi-Factor Authentication, and passwordless log-in when you can enable them through Auth0 straight out of the box? Auth0 is free to try, doesn’t require a credit card, and allows for up to 7,000 free active users and unlimited log-ins. Make your new account today and use any of the Auth0 APIs for a chance to win a pair of wireless headphones and a battery pack for you and each member of your team!
Best Use of Starknet
Starknet Care Package for Coders
Starknet is redefining the very notion of Web3 by tackling one of the most intimidating technical challenges in the industry - scaling a blockchain while maintaining its security and decentralization.
Starknet was the first general purpose ZK-Rollup service on Ethereum in Feb. 2022, and has proved its potential to be a market leader. Essentially, it increases the processing speed, while reducing the cost of operating on the Ethereum blockchain.
As a result, we are seeing a variety of “traditional” tech businesses - payments / social media / AI / online gaming - now being integrated with blockchains using our technology.
Moreover, the Starknet community is a growing pool of global talent - from feisty college students to some of the most illustrious PhDs in the world.
Best .Tech Domain Name
Blue Snowball Microphone & a Free .Tech Domain Name for Life!
Make your Team's Achievements timeless: Win a .Tech Domain Name for Life to Showcase and Expand Your Project, Plus 4 Blue Snowball Mics for Effortless Collaboration on Zoom, empowering you to build even more cool things together!
Best Use of AI in Education
TickTime Pomodoro Timer
Artificial Intelligence (AI) models, such as large language models (LLMs), are transforming how we interact with computers. During this weekend's hackathon, we want you to apply AI towards improving education to produce tools that support the quality, accessibility, and equitability of learning in today's classrooms. You can use AI to address any challenge teachers and students face, such as curriculum planning, question selection, teacher training, content generation, personalized feedback, automated grading and more.
For this challenge, we encourage you to draw on your own educational experiences and propose technical solutions to problems you've regularly encountered as students — after all, you are the best to know where our education system needs improvement. Design impactful and effective AI tools for education for a chance to win a TickTime Pomodoro Timer!
Best Developer Tool by Warp
Build a hack that focuses on improving the developer experience in some meaningful way - this could be tackling any part of the development lifecycle (creating, modifying or testing software)!
Prize: Keychron Mechanical Keyboards for each member of the winning team
Cloaked Security and Privacy Track by Cloaked
$100 giftcard for each member of the winning team!
any project in the following categories qualifies:
- Enhancing Consumer Privacy and General Security: Create innovative solutions addressing consumer privacy and general security concerns. Develop tools or practices that safeguard personal data, bolster security, or integrate robust privacy and security measures into projects.
- Security and Privacy Education Tool: Design and build a user-friendly tool that educates and promotes privacy and security practices among users.
- Data Deletion Tools: Develop a tool capable of identifying, locating, and securely removing personal information from the internet or breaches.
- Best Usage of Cloaked: Develop an innovative product leveraging Cloaked's unlimited identities and cards.
Best Use of AI for the Interview Process by Simplify Interviews
Integrate AI to simplify any part of the interview process, which can touch on anything from scraping and filtering candidates/companies, optimizing networking, smart forms to keep track of applications, etc.
Best Financial Hack by Capital One
Each team member receives a $250 Amazon gift card!
Best Use of MATLAB Prize by MathWorks
Show us the most creative and effective use of MATLAB to solve any challenge as part of the hackathon. MATLAB and a variety of toolboxes, developed for engineers and scientists provide you with numerous well documented functions that help you focus on the problem and not the implementation.
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges
Deep Dave
Rangarajan Lakshminarayanachar
Navdeep Malik
Malinda Huang
Anoop Gupta
Sivanagaraju Gadiparthi
Shashank Palakurthi
Tharak Abraham
Minos Park
Krishna Chaitanya Rao Kathala
Neha Dhaliwal
Shreyas Lakhtakia
Dhruv Seth
Suresh Aishwarya
Jay Jung
Simplify Interviews
Denali Tietjen
Saturn
Judging Criteria
-
Creativity
How unique is the concept behind the hack? Does it address a problem you didn’t even know existed? Does it address a common problem in a creative way or with an intuitive algorithm? What is this hack’s “ah-ha” moment? -
Utility
Does this hack function? If so, how in-depth is its functionality? How likely would you be to frequently use this hack in its current state in your own life? -
Charity
Does this hack address a specific societal need? If so, how well does it address it? What contributions does this hack make in the nation’s service and the service of humanity? -
Avidity
How excited do the team members seem about the final state of their project? Passion can be demonstrated through their presentation, the project’s description on Devpost, the future plans they have for their hack, or an overall polished program.
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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