HackUSU: 24-hours in Huntsman Hall

Sleeping bags littered the floor of Utah State University’s Jon M. Huntsman School of Business on the night of Feb. 28. Participants from across Utah came together for a 24-hour “hackathon” called HackUSU. The coding competition invited college students, recent graduates and high school seniors and to try their hand at a variety of categories.

Beginners and more experienced coders alike participated in the cybersecurity, hardware, game development, hacking the planet, AI & machine learning, datathon and sports analytics categories.
In addition to the competition itself, sponsors such as USU’s Space Dynamics Laboratory and AT&T were available for networking opportunities. Speakers presented on an array of topics from cybercrime to AI.

Duke McFarland is a computer science major from Utah Valley University who competed in HackUSU for the first time. His team was in the hacking the planet category of the competition.

According to huntsman.usu.edu, this category aimed to “tackle social challenges by creatively using technology to foster positive change, improve communities, or address global issues through innovative solutions.”

Despite the name, literal hacking is not involved.

“We created a website — just something that connects people to resources for food and resources for help and assistance in their local areas,” McFarland said. “I think it’s fun — a cool experience. I met cool people that I didn’t know before. Expanding my knowledge, I learned a new coding language I didn’t know before.”

Each team consisted of one to four participants and needed to have their project completed before judging began at 2 p.m. on March 1. $17,000 in prizes were awarded, including a $5,000 grant fund and Nintendo Switches.

“I had lots of fun building an actual product. I plan to come back next year,” McFarland said.
Chelsea Harding is a USU instructor in the data analytics and information systems department. She has been running HackUSU since 2019.

“HackUSU helps inspire students to create and build,” Harding wrote in an email to The Utah Statesman. “It gets them out of the slump of general education and gives them the space and environment to chase their dreams.”

The judging portion of the event allowed competitors ten minutes to present their projects. The criteria includes how technically impressive and well designed projects were, how well they worked and if the teams tried something new.

“Projects ranged widely. One built an echolocation device that a person could wear and could potentially help a blind person to have awareness of their surroundings,” Harding wrote. “Another built visualizations that helped to coordinate satellites orbiting in space and how they synchronize up.”

According to huntsman.usu.edu, the game development category urged participants to “unleash [their] creativity and build a unique, playable game during the hackathon. Impress the judges with innovative gameplay, captivating design, and an unforgettable player experience!”

One team consisting of USU students tried their hand in this category, but things didn’t go as planned. One of the team members was computer science major Matt Schnubel. Their project was a tank game.

“Our original idea was that each player gives a prompt to AI and it kind of determines what that strategy is,” Schnubel said. “Then there would be five or six tanks that were going to be on each of the sides that would go off those strategies. Last man standing wins.”

Despite working all night on their game, it didn’t end up working as they had hoped. Tanks drifted aimlessly around the screen. Although he didn’t turn anything into the judges, Schnubel still regarded HackUSU as a good experience and plans to return next year.

Harding explained the event has grown steadily over the years, starting out with under 300 participants from USU and UVU. This year, almost 600 participants attended, from students to sponsors.
Winners of the datathon category were Shreeya Maskey, Arogya Upadhyaya, Makenna Worley and Nicolas Van der Werf, who created a web visualization platform. The winners of the AI & machine learning category were Doyoung Yoon, Taehoon Kim, Jiwoong Kang and Jonghyuk Lee, who built an AI-generated storytelling software for children. In sports analytics, Brooklyn Monson, Emma Nebeker, Lydia Wright and Emma Deberard took first place through analyzing Mountain West Conference football data to see how factors impact game outcome.

“I love the creative spirit of a hackathon. There is something so energizing about telling someone, ‘You have 24 hours to see what you can build,’” Harding wrote. “The fear of failure flies out the window and people give themselves the chance to really work at an idea or project that they’ve had but never chased after.”