The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) organized and hosted ScarletHacks, Illinois Tech’s first Midwest-wide hackathon November 11–12. The entirely student-run hackathon brought 250 students from around the Midwest to Mies Campus for 24 hours of learning and building with technology.
During the two day event, students created algorithms to predict employee turnover, developed apps aimed at helping native Spanish speakers learn to code, and made virtual reality and augmented reality games. Prominent Chicago organizations like Braintree, Lyft, mHub, Designation, and the Coleman Foundation sponsored the event and judged student projects.
ScarletHacks marks Illinois Tech’s debut home event using Major League Hacking (MLH), the B-Corp that supports more than 65,000 student technologists around the world. Through our students’ participation in the 2018 MLH season, Illinois Tech as a school has reached #43 on the North American leaderboard, up from #100 in 2017. The hackathon is significant in Illinois Tech’s efforts to nurture STEM talent in the Chicago area, as nearly 84% of the participants gained their first experiences with civic tech, backend development, virtual reality, web development, C/C++, and Python at the event.
To learn more about ScarletHacks, visit the website.