This weekend (Jan 28-29), the third annual DeltaHacks hackathon was held at the Engineering Technology Building. Organized by a student group known as Phase One, the event was attended by more than 500 participants from McMaster and other campuses. In this Q&A, Stephanie Koehl, Co-Director of DeltaHacks and a level III Computer Science student at Mac speaks about the event.

What does it take to be a hacker?

Koehl: An eagerness to learn is a big thing. I think "hacker" is a misleading term because it seems intimidating. It is a term where you think you need to have a lot of knowledge or be someone who very committed to technology, but I think being a hacker is just being willing to learn and willing to try different solutions to a problem. The whole idea of a hackathon is to have people come together and try to think of these weird solutions that they wouldn't normally work on… they get to come up with these really cool solutions to problems.

We really want to inspire the hackers to create something that if implemented large-scale, would have a socio-positive impact on the world—we want to make them dream big.

There is this common notion about hackathons being really specific to people in engineering as or software-related programs. For this event itself, what measures did you take to make it more interdisciplinary?

Koehl: I think for marketing, we tried to reach out to different faculties. We reached out to the presidents of different programs and faculties and we tried to get them to push it that way. It is kind of unfortunate that the stigma is that you can only be in computer science or you can only be in software to be a hacker. There is great value in people who are in Political Science or health sciences or psychology even.

Computer science is so versatile that you can make projects given any subject. It is really nice having someone who is from a different faculty and can bring different perspectives. I think in university, your friend group is mostly the people who are in the same program, so it's nice to be able to interact with new people.

What are some of the best ideas you have seen in DeltaHacks?

Koehl: There was someone who made a website for Syrian refugees by promoting local restaurants and grocery stores that would have foods similar to Syria. It tried to link them to community centres and resources on what Canadian culture is… so I thought that was a cool idea.

Another one was a game for high school students to try out different engineering practices and see if engineering was for them. Just little puzzle games and then it would relate each puzzle game to a different stream of engineering.

We hear a lot about of hackathons at other campuses, so what makes this actually unique to our university?

Koehl: I think one of the biggest things about McMaster is that it is world-renowned for its health sciences program. That is why we always try to partner with them and make it a healthcare-based hackathon because we want to use our strengths to our advantage. We have access to hundreds of healthcare professionals that not a lot of other universities have.

What was the biggest challenge in getting women to come to this event?

Koehl: This year, both of our co-directors were women, which I thought was really fortunate for us. We tried to lead by example rather than marketing directly to women, since it comes off the wrong way.

For the past two years, our registration rate has been 18 per cent female. This year, the ratio of females that applied was 24 per cent, which is a slight increase.

By: Abeera Shahid

What if you had 36 hours to build a solution to any problem of your choice?

Almost 100 McMaster students travelled to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, from Nov. 11-13 for YHack. Hackathons are 36-hour technology marathons where students are challenged to build software and hardware solutions. Problems addressed span various disciplines, ranging from financial management for students to supporting firefighters in emergencies.

Hacking is a creative endeavour and provides students with an opportunity to apply their skill set to a larger problem. Yale Hacks is especially popular with McMaster students because PhaseOne, formerly HackitMac, supports the organization of the trip every year. The trip brings together students across disciplines in a weeklong trip abroad.

This year, McMaster students focused their energy on finance hacks.

“[One group] did an app that infused seven different finance companies and their entire application, their hack, was to create an automated trading bot. The trading bot was to completely optimize all of the stock trades a person would want to commit to and it would be verified by FINRA and go through your wallet as well,” explained Tai Rui Tong, PhaseOne’s president.

Hackathons are also competitive where top teams can win cash prizes, and there are various sponsors offering additional incentives. McMaster students took 3rd place home and several sponsor prizes.

Students are active in hackathons around North America, and McMaster has a growing community of students invested in technology. PhaseOne is the largest student-run tech community on campus, and they want to get everyone involved regardless of their current experience or faculty.

“Having someone out of the engineering faculty with a whole new worldview is crucial for anything to be successful. Making hacks that are impactful to society or any sort of situation, you require visions of people who see things from a totally different perspective,” said Tong.

To achieve widespread engagement, PhaseOne hosts code nights on Thursday evenings, operates a Facebook group where people can ask their technology-related questions and organizes McMaster’s very own hackathon: Deltahacks. Deltahacks is held once a year, and is scheduled for the weekend of Jan. 28 this school year.

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By: Saad Ejaz

DeltaHacks, an event organized by the HackitMac, held their second annual student hackathon at McMaster University on Jan. 16 and 17. The event proceeded with great momentum as over 300 students across Ontario came together to hack for positive change.

Beginning on Saturday morning, teams from different disciplines worked together for 24 hours to create a hack for positive change. A number of professionals, including doctors and professors, assisted the student-led teams. Coding mentors were also present, and helped students apply their ideas.

The event was focused around encouraging students to build and hack for social change. This could include health and wellness, sustainability or education.

The event yielded a total of over 50 unique project submissions. The winning project was a healthcare initiative by “Hips Don’t Lie”, a team of three: Mushfiqur Rahman, Hassan Muhammad and Stephen Murray. The trio worked with a McMaster orthopediatrician to create a web-app that uses x-ray images to diagnose a physiological condition known as femoroacetabular impingement through image processing algorithms.

Mohamed Fouda, a member of HackitMac, explained that the initiative started with the intent of creating positive change. “Here at McMaster we have great attention to social impact … we have a society program, we have Engineers Without Borders, we have Doctors Without Borders … we thought, okay, our hackathon should focus on projects that have a meaning to them. So we tried to encourage students to not just build anything, but try to give a thought before building, for a problem your hack would be able to solve,” said Fouda.

Students were encouraged to continue refining and building their projects even after the competition. Melissa Lam, a second year mechatronics student and a member of HackitMac, stresses on the importance of trying new things. “You got to go out and try new things … you got to give it a try, you got to fail,” she said. “You got to see the road, and that’s what university is for, to go out and do new things.”

Fouda added that the group hopes to do more in the future. “In terms of our long term vision, we have hit our milestones but we are still far from [finished]. The reason why we have HackitMac and DeltaHacks is because we are trying to create this community of people here at Mac just building stuff. They are trying, they are failing, and then they are trying again and then they are failing again … And they keep learning from mistakes and keep building … collaborating between different faculties, backgrounds, they share knowledge, they innovate and they build and solve problems.”

The team at HackitMac and DeltaHacks has received a great response and support in their first two years. They hope to continue inspiring groups to take on new ideas and work towards positive change.

Photo Credit: Jin Lee

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