Hackathon Draws More Than 100 Engineering Students

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107 U of A students competed for prizes in the 24-hour programming contest!

More than 100 U of A computer science and computer engineering students spent 24 hours competing in the Association for Computing Machinery's Hackathon held overnight Nov. 11-12. The programming contest was sponsored by J.B. Hunt and SupplyPike.

The 107 students divided into 23 teams. Around 6 p.m. Nov. 11, the teams were assigned a prompt: over the course of the next 24 hours, develop some sort of "smart home" device. The students had until 5:30 p.m. the next day, and many teams stayed up all night working on their programs. The association provided food and drinks for the participants, and the Computer Science and Computer Engineering Department staff provided logistical support.

The competition was judged by Wing Ning Li, professor of computer science and computer engineering; Reetik Patel, computer science and computer engineering alumnus and previous Association for Computing Machinery president; Tyler Tracy, computer science and computer engineering alumnus and SupplyPike engineer; Chandler Abbott, SupplyPike operations executive; Dana Lepene, manager of engineering and technology at J.B. Hunt; and Greg Judkins, senior director engineering and technology at J.B. Hunt.

The winning team, called "Big Dawgs," was made up of computer science seniors Jose Martinez, Austin Flynn, Marvin Violantes, Alexis Mercado, Steven Liang and Honors College computer science student Sam Lefforge. Their project titled "Iron Man's House" consisted of hand-gesture controlled household appliances.

For the purpose of the presentation, the team demonstrated the hand gestures controlling the audio levels of a speaker. In addition to the first-place team, nine other students went home with prizes including 3D printers, gaming monitors, virtual reality headsets, AirPods Pro, keyboards, gaming mice, Ardiono mega kits and additional prizes from SupplyPike.

Association President Jack Norris said, "The entire University of Arkansas ACM team is ecstatic at this semester's Hackathon turnout. There were an unprecedented number of teams and participants that showed off their creativity and problem-solving skills to the judges and their fellow students. We hope to see even more next semester as we grow the ACM."