Hacking the Innovations of Tomorrow: New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and the Association for Computing Machinery

On Nov 18, 2014

More than 50 undergraduate students offered a first-hand glimpse into the innovations of the future at HackNJIT, a 24-hour hackathon in Newark hosted by the College of Computing Sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and the Association for Computing Machinery on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9, 2014.

“NJIT has a long history of partnerships with companies that recognize the central role of computing in science, business and industry,” said Marek Rusinkiewicz, Dean of NJIT’s College of Computing Sciences. “We are grateful to the many sponsors who support HackNJIT and invest in the future of computing and other high-technology businesses in New Jersey.”

Sponsors of HackNJIT include AT&T, Yashi, ADDTEQ, Audible, eMazzanti Technologies, FDM Group, Genband, Hearst Magazines, Merck, North Jersey Federal Credit Union, ordr.in, and Tata Consultancy Services.

Representatives of the sponsoring companies were on hand to distribute promotional items, mentor the competitors’ progress, and provide information about potential career opportunities.

“The quality of mobile apps created through the HackNJIT demonstrates the talent of New Jersey’s technology community,” said J. Michael Schweder, Mid-Atlantic President, AT&T. “We applaud the undergraduate students who participated in the initiative which underscores the great demand for programmers, both amateur and professional, to create mobile apps to help drive the local economy.”

HackNJIT participants collaborated to engineer and code innovative computer applications and mobile apps, websites, and hardware hacks over a 24-hour time frame. The top three winners and their prize-winning entries were:

• First place: Thiago Couto, Lex Dreitser, Gabriel Esposito, and Isaiah Little for their Factory Fresh Food app
• Second place: David Awad and Nikolas Rassoules for BitCloud, a bitcoin-mining program
• Third place: Joseph Delgado for rly.sexy/mice, a multiplayer application that uses a cursor to play minigames

Special prizes from sponsors included: $500 from ADDTEQ to Binoy Patel for his project HipFood. Patel received using the hipchat API. The restaurant service API used by Patel was provided by ordr.in, another event sponsor.

The BitCloud project team received a special prize from Yashi: a drone with a GoPro camera.

FDM Group awarded an iPad Mini for the Best User Interface to John Moreira, Brandon Ruggles and Dante Urso of the Challenge Mobile team.

NJIT’s Office of Technology Development, who provided consulting assistance and introductions to university administrators on commercializing their app through the New Jersey Innovation Acceleration Center, awarded a prize to William Ruys, Tyler Shuhnicki, and Josef Mohrenwieser for their project “NJIT Schedule Builder for Students Who Can’t Make Decisions.”

Two teams who used APIs provided by GENBAND received iPad Airs from the company. First prize was awarded to the Heliograph team, comprised of Mohammad Salim, Jonathan Tan, and Mark Zgaljic. Zill Christian and Yassin Olabi of the 2v2 debug team received second prize.

GENBAND was on hand to promote Kandy, its real-time communications software development platform built from the company’s core telecommunications, presence, security and real-time technologies. GENBAND Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions and Product Line Management Carl Baptiste is a member of the College of Computing Sciences Board of Visitors.

“We are always excited to participate in a real authentic coding event,” said Patrick Asher, Vice President of Program Management, Cloud of GENBAND’s Kandy platform. “Since industry is working so quickly, we are excited to see what the young innovators of tomorrow will do.”

For one company sponsor, HackNJIT was a homecoming of sorts. Mark Paone, who received a B.S. in computer science from NJIT in 2011, is vice president of Yashi, an online video advertising company based in Toms River. Yashi presented an award for the most innovative entry.

“I’m thrilled to be able to see first-hand what the students can do,” Paone said.

Major League Hacking (MLH) is the official student hackathon league. Each semester, more than 15,000 developers, designers, and makers compete for their schools’ victory at the 50-plus official MLH hackathons in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom.

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