HackNJIT Matches Pre-Pandemic Participation, Map-Hunting Game Impresses Judges
Nautical nonsense is something they wished, and it was granted at this year’s edition of HackNJIT, where almost 400 students from New Jersey Institute of Technology and many other schools completed 63 ocean-themed projects.
A game called Treasure Snap — built by Peter Akdemir, Dustin La, Gabriel Pascual and Joshua Quizon — was the top NJIT finisher, second overall, for their treasure-hunting software where anyone can upload an image and its GPS coordinates, and then players must find the same location, take a picture and upload it themselves. If the location and image are a match, then you win. Its four creators took home $1,000 for their efforts.
“There are a lot of really interesting technical aspects that went into it,” said Akdemir, a senior from River Edge majoring in computer science and minoring in applied mathematics. “Specifically, for deciding whether an image is valid or not, is the convolutional neural network. So we were able to integrate machine learning,” he said, adding that he and teammates learned the technique from Pantelis Monogioudis, a professor of practice in the Ying Wu College of Computing data science department. They programmed their game in Python using data visualization tools.
Ethan Ho was the event chief organizer. Ho is president of the NJIT Association for Computing Machinery chapter and a junior computer science major from Bergen County. This being his second year of participating, “It was a lot of fun, and my personal preference because I really do enjoy the planning,” he said. “I think overall the event did perform well and a lot of attendees enjoyed it.”
We are incredibly proud of ACM's efforts this year in delivering a magnificent HackNJIT 2023
A team from Rhode Island’s Johnson & Wales University was the first-place winner, with a game called Wager Whales, letting players bet on where aquarium creatures might swim next. Third place went to a Rowan University team for a maritime safety application called SeaSOS.
Ho said he was pleasantly surprised to see substantial participation from Middlesex College, in Edison, and even one person from the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada). “Overall, I think the event was amazing to be a part of, to help plan, especially with the people that were involved, whether it be faculty, staff, and even janitors. They helped us out so much. We tried to make the venue as themed as possible, to make it interesting” — especially for the computing college’s record-setting first-year class, he noted.
The event reached pre-COVID participation levels and was even mentioned on television by a CBS News meteorologist. Last year’s event had an outdoors theme. There was a zoo theme in 2021, preceded by a fully virtual event in 2020. NJIT students also organize GirlHacks and Byte into Hardware.
Event sponsors were Verizon (gold level); Data Bank and Patient Safety Tech (silver); Stevens Capital Management (bronze); and special supporters Amazon Web Services and StandOut Stickers.
Ying Wu College of Computing leaders expressed their appreciation for Ho, his organizing team and all participants. “We are incredibly proud of ACM's efforts this year in delivering a magnificent HackNJIT 2023,” said Ali Mili, interim dean of the college. “It's especially fitting that in its tenth year, this event achieved such great success. The energy, excitement and impressive nature of the competition was truly felt by attendees and sponsors alike."
