Annual NJIT GirlHacks Competition Goes into Space, and Beyond

LunaTech, a web application where players can learn about space from a cartoon cat and send their professors into orbit, won first place in GirlHacks 2023 at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The application is the brainchild of Fizah Fahad, Adrianna Rust and Ayushi Sangoi, who combined to win a $1,500 cash prize for their efforts. The trio coded in CSS, JavaScript, Python and a NASA programming interface.

LunaTech was one of 31 submitted projects, built by approximately 130 participants, all working on site from the Campus Center ballroom, said event director Shaili Soni, president of NJIT’s Women in Computing Society. Soni is a senior computer science major and a member of Albert Dorman Honors College.

GirlHacks had a theme for the first time, Space, and the universe complied: nature sent a tropical rainstorm, while NASA made headlines that weekend for successfully retrieving an asteroid sample.

Soni, an Edison native, said she learned about WICS during her college tour and knew that if she decided to enroll as a Highlander, the club would be on her shortlist of extracurricular activities. Now as its leader, she embraces the motto “hack fearlessly” that was emphasized by GirlHacks keynote speakers Laura Brown and Isabel Espina. Both work for ADP, which was the event’s diamond-level sponsor. "There is no better way for students to unleash their creativity and innovative spirit than during an in-person hackathon event," ADP Global Technical Director Avni Shah commented.

Most of the GirlHacks participants followed the space theme and many of those submitted games. The applications included Make My Space Trip and Field Tracker, which one second and third place, respectively. Some of the other on-topic applications were Astro Duck, Find My Alien, SatNav Explorer and SpaceSaver, to name a few. Soni was fond of an asteroid game called Base Wars.

Rust, of the LunaTech team, said she was excited about the space theme because she’d already learned about using the NASA API in web development courses taught by Senior University Lecturer Rosemina Vohra. Moreover, “I liked being among women. It felt nice to see everyone there. For the normal hackathons, it is male-dominated,” she explained.

Rust is a senior information technology major from Hamilton. Her hobby is art, and she’s torn between using her share of the prize to replace her old, cracked iPad, or saving the money to help pay rent after she graduates next spring. “My heart wants the iPad. My logic says, you can still draw in between the cracks, she’s not done yet!”

She credited teammate Sangoi with the idea of downloading pictures of the entire NJIT faculty from their official pages, storing them in a database and letting players use those pictures for the rocket icon in one of the games. “We got annoyed with our professors giving us a ton of assignments, so we wanted to have some stress relief by sending them to space,” she joked, in the application’s official description.

Fiserv and Sitetracker were GirlHacks silver-level sponsors. Merck and Prudential were bronze level, while Tata Consultancy Services provided gift-in-kind resources. Additional resources were provided by NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing.

“The women of WiCS did a phenomenal job planning and executing a fun, engaging and very well attended competition,” said YWCC’s Dina Anello, director of external relations. “I was so pleased to hear from both students and sponsors how much they enjoyed the event. While these competitions are important for students to gain valuable, hands-on experience, they're also a fantastic way for our corporate partners to engage with students and build their on campus brand.”