Neumont Hosts High-Stakes Hackathon
Neumont Hosts High-Stakes Hackathon
Neumont College recently hosted a 48-hour hackathon, hosted by the Program Chair of Software and Game Development degree, Ray Maple. Maple is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience developing video games for companies like Disney, Warner Bros, Nintendo, and Sony. The Hackathon included 16 teams competing under intense pressure to develop technical projects across several categories.
The theme for this year’s hackathon: “A Better Tomorrow,” challenged students to develop products that improved the lives of others. The event’s timeline gave the participants only 48 hours to create and submit their projects. Faculty judges, Joe Shull, Program Chair of Artificial Intelligence Engineering degree, Ray Maple, and Omkar Terse, Instructor, were then given 24 hours to review and determine the winners.
Categories That Drove the Competition
Participants could enter one of several categories, each demanding a unique set of skills:
📱 App Development
🧠 AI
💻 Hardware & 🤖 Robotics
🎮 Entertainment & Games
A Weekend of Innovation and Learning
The weekend was filled with early morning brainstorming meetings, coding sessions running late into the night, and energy drinks fueling the creative process. Participants like Damian Lagunas recall struggling to get their team’s mobile application, SYNC, to connect: “We had all the parts to put together our project but struggled with making it work with each other. We realized that we had over scoped our project.”
Meet The Winners
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - Richard Grover, Tyson Jenkins, and Josh Arbon created Waterlog. A neural network written from scratch in C++ that is trained on a water quality dataset. It can determine if water is safe to drink based on properties like pH and oxygen content.
APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT - Noah Delbridge and Darion Quarles submitted A Better Tomorrow. A domain designed to direct users to the right sources for help, eliminating the need to navigate through countless websites. Sources include help hotlines, shelters, and education centers.
ENTERTAINMENT & GAMES - Jacob Leonardo developed the game Speederena. A combination of fast-paced racing and intense arena combat, challenging players to not only be the fastest but also the smartest on the track. The game features sleek, customizable vehicles that race through futuristic environments, filled with sharp turns, obstacles, and power-ups.
The Hackathon pushed students to develop something useful in a short amount of time, proving they could hack it. Can you?
Keep an eye out for future events!