Computer Science Student Represents NJIT for Second Year at TreeHacks 2026

Gurmeher Singh, a sophomore computer science major with a minor in AI in the Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) and Albert Dorman Honors College, was the sole NJIT student for the second year to be one of 1,000 accepted from major universities, including Ivy Leagues, out of 15,000 applications to Stanford University’s TreeHacks 2026. The highly selective competition is a touchstone among top hackathons across the world.

Already a seasoned hackathon veteran from NJIT competitions, along with a set of wins earlier in the year at Columbia University’s DivHacks 2025, Singh was one of several students from the university to qualify for TreeHacks but the only one selected to participate in what is considered the largest hackathon in the country. 

His four-person team, which included two students from Oregon State University and one from UConn, collaborated during the 36-hour event to develop Benchwarmer, a solution that automates the benchmarking process by prompting a user to upload their research papers and the custom algorithm they want to benchmark. The system then parses and fetches benchmarking suites, runs all implementations in real-time in Modal sandboxes, and analyzes to create any type of plot/chart through a conversational interface. 

Singh’s biggest thrill, however, was the opportunity to hear from esteemed leaders and CEOs of companies sponsoring Treehacks, including Sam Altman from OpenAI and Garry Tan from Y Combinator, a venture fund for startups that have included DoorDash, Airbnb, and OpenAI. 

“I want to be at the forefront of creating new technology at the ‘zero to one’ stage as part of the startup ecosystem, so you might say that this fan saw some of his idols!” he said. 

His innovation is already having a direct influence on NJIT as well. He is currently working alongside a team of students and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness to build an in-house NLP tool for analyzing more than 800,000 NJIT course evaluation surveys, and previously developed a prototype that matches electives based on a student’s interests, which has attracted over 200 users (njitelectiveadvisor.com).

Singh credits his experience with NJIT hackathons for helping him on his journey to developing an interest in the startup space – and for “validating my efforts” by being part of TreeHacks 2026.