HackMIT is MIT’s largest hackathon. Over a 24-hour period from September 17 to 18, 1,000 hackers from around the world will gather on MIT’s campus to experiment and innovate on software and hardware projects. This is your weekend to dust off old ideas or try something completely new. Imagine the craziest projects possible, and work on the hack of your dreams!

Please submit your team name and table number in our GOOGLE FORM (https://go.hackmit.org/submit) by 9:30am on Sunday, September 20th. You may continue to hack on your project until hacking stops at 11am on Sunday, September 20th.

Eligibility

Teams that were admitted through the HackMIT lottery system and follow the Code of Conduct are eligible to submit an entry. You must be at least 18 years old and an undergraduate college student. 

Requirements

Make sure you submit the Google From at go.hackmit.org/submit or your project will not be included in judging.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$79,570 in prizes

First Place

Ticket and flight to a tech conference of your choice (up to $1000 per hacker)

Runner-Up

HackMIT developer pack (choice of hardware/software up to $500 per hacker)

Best Machine Learning Hack (2)

GTX 1080 GPU or $600 of AWS or Azure credit

Best use of Algorithms

The 21 Bitcoin Computer

Made from Scratch

3D Printer Kit

Best xkcd Reference (2)

An xkcd book of your choice

Best Pusheen Reference

Pusheen plushie

Best use of Coinbase API

1 btc

Two Sigma Prize

$1000 Visa gift card for the most creative submission using the Beaker notebook (http://beakernotebook.com)

Google Cardboard Development Prize (4)

Google is a global technology leader focused on improving the ways people connect with information. Google’s innovations in web search and advertising have made its website a top Internet property and its brand one of the mostrecognized in the world.

Best On-Demand Hack (Postmates)

Using the Postmates Delivery API, developers can integrate our on-demand local delivery platform into their applications. The API is designed to allow application developers to check prices, book a delivery, then follow updates on that delivery till completion. Prize: $500 in Postmates Delivery Credit

Best Creative Car Hack (Ford)

It's an API for cars! With OpenXC you can access a ton of real-time vehicle data like GPS, vehicle speed, wiper blade status, door open/close status and much more! In Android or Python. Prize: OpenXC Hardware and 4 Tickets to Team O'Neil Rally School

Best use of Capital One's API - Nessie

Nessie is Capital One’s Hackathon API that gives you access to a multitude of real public-facing data - such as ATM and bank branch locations - along with mock customer account data. Use HTTP requests to set up peer-to-peer transactions, simulate a weekly paycheck, or even schedule bills for customers! This is all structured in a way that resembles how we actually run things here at Capital One. Prize: $400 Amazon Gift Card

Most interesting use of Wikipedia data around the US presidential candidates, campaigns and/or upcoming election (Kensho) (2)

1st Prize: DJI Phantom 2 drone, 2nd prize: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

Best use of Amadeus APIs

$500 Visa gift card

Best NativeScript App (Progress)

Best Mobile App that showcases the general value proposition of using NativeScript. Prize: $100 Amazon or Apple Gift Card

Best NativeScript App for IOT (Progress)

Best Mobile App that showcases the value proposition of using NativeScript in the context of non-traditional markets. Some bias on "IOT", but choose your own interpretation of "IOT". Prize: $100 Amazon or Apple Gift Card

Nasdaq MarketSite Prize

All expense paid trip to MarketSite, where you'll be broadcast onto Times Square and take part in the closing bell ceremony!

Concur Prize for Best Travel Hack

Code Black Drone with HD Camera

Best Use of Microsoft Technology

Surface Pro 4 i7 and Keyboard

KCG Prize

$50 American Express Gift Card

Best Use of Wolfram Technologies

Winning team will be invited to our Wolfram Technology Conference in October to present their winning hack, along with 1 year Wolfram|Alpha Pro, and 1 year of Wolfram Development Platform.

Most Innovative use of Synaptics Fingerprint Sensor

$1,500 cash prize split amongst team members

Most Innovative use of Synaptics Large Touch Sensor

$1,500 cash prize split amongst team members

Best Use of Emerging Technology (Disney)

Sphero BB-8 droids

Facebook Hackathon Finals Trip

All expense paid trip for up to 4 team members to Facebook HQ for Hackathon Finals

Oculus Prize (Facebook)

Oculus Rift Developers Kit Dk2 for each team member

Most Insightful Hack (BNP Paribas)

Use natural language processing, machine learning and data visualization tools, to create ways to present insightful information extracted from any publicly available unstructured data source such as public statements, legal documentations, marketing prospectus , or regulatory filings such the ones below. One possible source using funds N-CSR reports of holdings: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000881773&type=N-CSR and https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?CIK=0000923184&action=getcompany&scd=series. Prize: $250 Worth of Amazon Gift Cards (For Up to 4 People, Total Value = $250)

Rough Draft Ventures Prize

The winning team will meet the Rough Draft Ventures Student Team and pitch their startup for up to $25K in funding.

Best Use of FOSS in a Drone Cargo Management System App (Local Motors Labs) (10)

Unmanned Flying Cargo Delivery Drones, OH MY! Show off your best programming moves by creating app solutions for a Drone Cargo Management System. Think logistics management for cargo transported via a drone and you’ll be on your way to fulfilling this challenge. Some examples of apps you may choose to tackle: Shipping/location/delivery notification system via GPS to sender, operator and receiver (could include scanning packing labels); Package routing info due to weather, logistics, customer requests; Pics of takeoff, landing, packer, receiver; Receiver ID and signature info; Inside air temp (IAT) monitoring, environmental sensor info (temperature, pressure, etc.); Weight balance (center of gravity detection); Hazardous material detection; as well as your “Blue Sky” ideas not yet defined. FOSS only please. Now deliver the "flying" goods...pun def intended 'cause the sky really is the limit on this challenge!! See localmotors.com/hackmit2016 for more info should you choose to accept this flight mission. Prize: 1st Prize: $2000/for the team to split + Verrado Drift Trike per team member + LM Internship Interview per team member; 2nd Prize: $1000/for the team to split + 3DP Longboard per team member + LM Internship Interview/for EACH team member; 1st and 2nd place teams welcome to join Airbus Group and Local Motors mentors and company representatives for a dinner on 9/18/16.

Best Low Level / High Performance Hack (Hudson River Trading)

At HRT we care about performance; both throughput and latency. Accomplishing this goal is a lofty task, and often means going beyond the surface and diving into the nitty-gritty implementation of a particular abstraction. As such, we'd like to recognize a project that has a particularly clever use of a low-level property of their computing environment.

Focus based document summarization (Philips)

Problem Definition: There is a tremendous amount of information generated from blogs, news, and social media. The textual information most likely has several distinct events, sentiments, opinions and facts mentioned in the same document. Text summarization is the process of taking complex text and making simple summaries by identifying important pieces of the text. Focus based document summarization is generating a summary document into a structured document where the result can be identified as encoding information into broad semantic components such as “Who did What to Whom When and Where.” The current task is to build a computational model that generates this focus based summarization. A more challenging task would be to create automatic visualizations for the summary tasks.
Data source: http://l3s.de/~gtran/timeline/Timeline17.zip
Prize: Philips Sonicare HealthyWhite+

Best use of Firebase

4 Posh Micro Phones, 4 Lego architecture sets, 1 awesome flame trophy

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

How to enter

Registration is now closed for HackMIT. There is no longer any way to enter HackMIT unless you are a local student trying to walk-in the day-of.

 

Judges

Katie Siegel

Katie Siegel
Full-stack software engineer @ Samsara

John Werner

John Werner
VP @ Meta

Peter Boyce II

Peter Boyce II
Founder @ Rough Draft Ventures

John Bicket

John Bicket
Founder & CTO @ Samsara

John Whaley

John Whaley
Founder & CEO @ UnifyID

Judging Criteria

  • Technical Complexity
    Is the hack technically difficult or interesting? Does the hack apply technical skills to solve a challenging problem? Is the hack impressive when considering the time constraints?
  • Idea, Novelty, and Wow Factor
    How creative or original is the idea? Does the hack present a new and unique functionality? Or does the hack demonstrate a new solution/new angle/increased scale on an older problem or goal?
  • Design and Implementation
    Is the user experience smooth, intuitive, and clear? Is the hack aesthetically pleasing? Does the design of the hack contribute to its functionality? Does the hack feature clever integration of different kinds of hardware/API?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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