HackMIT

Thank you to our hackers for attending HackMIT this year! We hope that you’ve learned something new and built something that you’re proud of. We’re so impressed by all of our project submissions, and we hope to see you again next year for an even better hackathon!

With that being said, we would love your feedback on this event while it’s still fresh in your memory. We are always looking for ways to improve HackMIT, so please complete our feedback form at go.hackmit.org/hacker-feedback 🐳

HackMIT truly wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of sponsors. Thank you to all of our amazing sponsors this year for helping us organize our first fully in-person hackathon since 2019!

Here’s the full list of sponsors:
Jump Crypto
BNB Chain
Solana Foundation
InterSystems
thatgamecompany
Sonr
Citadel
Quantstamp
IBM
Arrowstreet Capital
Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative
Meta
Vividly
QuantCo
Rockstar Games
Five Rings
Panera Bread
McKinsey & Company
Locket
Ocient
formlabs
Sia Foundation
Jane Street
Premier
Dropbox

Shout-out to for donating their energy drinks to HackMIT this year! We really appreciate your support 🐟

Thank you to for their generous donation of 700 cookies to HackMIT 2022! We loved having Insomnia Coolies at our midnight snack event 🌙🍪

The second fireside chat today is with Amy Wibowo! Join us today in Johnson Media Room from 4 PM to 5 PM.

Amy Wibowo (MIT '06, M. Eng '08) is a creative technologist whose work has been featured in The New Yorker, Forbes, and Recode. Her art ranges from murals for local maker spaces, to sweaters made on a hacked knitting machine, to RFID jewelry. She is also the author and illustrator of Bubblesort Zines, a zine series making computer science topics more accessible to a general audience. Before starting her own creative technology studio, she was previously a Human Computer Interaction researcher at the University of Tokyo's Igarashi Lab and a robotics researcher working on ASIMO at Honda Research Institute in Wako-shi, Japan. While at MIT, she was passionate about teaching and mentoring, serving as a lab assistant for the now discontinued 6.001 (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) and a TA for 6.042 (Mathematics for Computer Science).

The first fireside chat today is with Lynn Davis! Join us in Johnson Media Room today from 2 PM to 3 PM.

Lynn Davis graduated from MIT with a SB in Civil Engineering. She lived in Cambridge, MA and worked as a civil engineer for the US Government after graduation. She received an MBA and MPH from Columbia University and then worked at Bell Labs for 30 years. During the pandemic, Lynn started shooting cooking videos with her videographer son, Tim, and to their amazement, Cooking with Lynja, went viral and they have over 15M subscribers.

Today’s fireside chat is with Vanessa Feliberti Bautista!

Join us tonight from 7 PM to 8 PM in room 3-270 or our YouTube channel (go.hackmit.org/youtube) if you cannot attend in-person.

Vanessa leads the Substrate Engineering team which fuels a simple, delightful and personal experience, assisting our customers to be the most productive across work and life; by helping them get started, get back to and get the most out of Microsoft 365. Substrate is Microsoft’s essential and intelligent productivity services platform to enable delightful, trustworthy, agile, and cost-effective experiences by delivering on Fundamentals, Compliance, and Intelligence. Alongside product impact, Vanessa builds diverse teams, drives adoption of inclusive behaviors, and creates programs to foster innovation and opportunities for talent in new ways.

We’re excited to kick off our fireside chat series!

HackMIT 2022’s first fireside chat is with Justin Kan. Join us tomorrow (Sept 27) from 6 PM to 7:30 PM ET on go.hackmit.org/hackweek-zoom

Justin Kan is an American web3 entrepreneur and investor. He is a cofounder of Fractal, a marketplace for gamers to discover, buy and sell durable game assets and NFTs. He’s also a General Partner at Goat Capital, a seed fund that backs entrepreneurs with over $100M in assets under management. Previously, Justin was a cofounder of Twitch, the internet live video streaming platform. In 2006, Justin launched the live video service Justin.tv, a company that started when he strapped a camera to his head and streamed his life to the internet 24/7. Over the next 8 years, through twists and turns, he and his cofounders turned the business into Twitch, ultimately selling to Amazon in 2014 for $970 million.

⚠️ Time for Hack Week ⚠️

Throughout the week leading up to HackMIT 2022, we will be hosting a series of events including workshops and fireside chats.

📣🤞Calling all MIT students🤞📣

Host a hacker at HackMIT 2022 for TechCash! You can sign up and find more details at go.hackmit.org/host 🏠🛏

Application deadline has been extended by 48 hours to Sunday, August 14 at 11:59PM EDT!! Link in bio 🌊🦑

If you’re having verification or submission issues, email [email protected]. We can’t wait to read your apps 🌟

Only 4 more days left to apply! Applications close on August 12th at 11:59 PM ET. Make sure to get your application in at hackmit.org before then!

If you have any questions or need help regarding HackMIT, feel free to ask us on Instagram or email us at [email protected] 🐋

✨ TODAY IS THE DAY ✨ SUBMIT YOUR APPS BY 11:59PM ET!!

WHO’S EXCITED FOR HACKMIT 2021?? 🥳🎉💻

🚨 ONE MORE DAY!! 🚨 APPLY BY TOMORROW AT 11:59 EST TO BE CONSIDERED TO ATTEND HACKMIT 2021!

3️⃣ more days until HackMIT 2021 applications are due!!

Apply @ my.hackmit.org

Registration for HackMIT 2021 is open at hackmit.org; we've extended the deadline to August 13! 🌿 Be sure to get your application in!

We’re inviting over 1000 students to hack with us virtually or in-person from September 18-19. If the FAQ on our site doesn't answer your questions, email us at [email protected].

You'll get the opportunity to ...
• Meet diverse hackers from all over the world
• Expand your skill set by learning new technologies
• Interact with sponsors and hear their stories
• Receive mentorship from industry professionals
• Compete for awesome prizes

What’s that? That’s right! The HackMIT application deadline has been 🚨extended🚨!!! Submit your app by NEXT FRIDAY (8/13) at 11:59PM ET!!

HackMIT updated their information in their About section.

Register for HackMIT 2021 now at https://hackmit.org! 🌿

Come join hackers from around the world to create innovative technology projects from September 18-19 in our first ever hybrid event! Admissions will close on Friday, August 6; more information about eligibility and hackathon logistics is available on our website. Be ready for an unforgettable hacking experience!

Contact us at [email protected] with questions or concerns.

Introducing HackWeek fireside chat speaker: Qasar Younis!

Qasar Younis is CEO at Applied Intuition and most recently was the COO at Y Combinator. Prior to YC, Qasar's second startup was funded by YC and acquired by Google Maps. Before startups, Qasar was an automotive engineer at GM and Bosch. He has a Bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from General Motors Institute and an MBA from Harvard Business School. As the foremost enabler of autonomous vehicle development, Applied Intuition equips engineering and product development teams with software that makes it faster, safer, and easier to bring autonomy to market. Applied’s suite of products, focused on simulation and analytics, delivers sophisticated infrastructure built for scale. Industry leading companies of all sizes use Applied to comprehensively test and rapidly accelerate their autonomous vehicle development.

Qasar will be speaking at our first HackWeek event, tomorrow 9/14 6-7pm EDT! Join us at go.hackmit.org/fireside!

Introducing HackWeek fireside chat speaker: Pooja Sankar!

Pooja Sankar’s life story begins in a village in India. She became a computer scientist and started Piazza to solve the problems she had as one of only three women in her classes. She holds an undergraduate Computer Science degree from IIT, India, a Masters Computer Science degree from University of Maryland, College Park and an MBA from Stanford Business School.

Piazza Q&A is now the premier social learning platform, helping more than 5 million students learn beyond the traditional classroom in more than 2,000 universities spanning 90 countries. Students use Piazza to work together collaboratively despite differences in learning levels, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, and instructors address their questions as they arise. While Piazza Q&A enables inclusive learning, the Piazza Network opens up career opportunities.

HackMIT 2020 starts in just over a week! For our final hacker spotlight, let's hear from Shashvat about his experience at HackMIT 2019, where he and his team won a sponsor challenge for the Best Hack to Help the Housing Inequality Crisis!

"My team and I made HappyHome, a website that lets you compare homes based on their proximity to different facilities. For example, you could compare two or more homes based on their distance to schools and grocery stores.

For me, the most memorable part of HackMIT 2019 was the ending ceremony, where I got to see all the cool projects everyone did. I found that HackMIT was a great way to meet up with some of my friends that went to other schools, both nearby and far away. ​HackMIT helped me realize that there are a lot of creative things you can do with computer science."

That concludes our hacker spotlight series! We had so many fantastic projects last year, and we're looking forward to all the amazing projects our hackers will create this year.

Introducing fireside chat speaker: Linda Avey!

Linda Avey is co-founder and CEO of Precisely, a San Francisco-based precision health company utilizing an intelligent agent technology that automates preventive health. They are initially focusing on the health system of India, where population growth is out-pacing clinical capacity. In 2006 Linda envisioned and co-founded 23andMe, which has become the world's largest consumer interactive genetics research platform. The idea stemmed from her work at Affymetrix and Perlegen Sciences, early tech providers in the genetics industry. Her involvement with patient communities cemented the idea that people would be willing to share their data in order to make progress in understanding their diseases. Today, millions of individuals are participating in 23andMe research studies, providing statistical power needed to make significant progress not feasible through academic models.

Introducing fireside chat speaker: Tom Preston-Werner!

Tom Preston-Werner is a software developer, inventor, and entrepreneur living and working in San Francisco. He is currently the cofounder and Chief Product Officer of Chatterbug, the best way to learn a foreign language online. He’s also building RedwoodJS, a full-stack JavaScript web framework for the Jamstack. Prior to these, Tom cofounded GitHub in 2008, where he served as CEO and helped grow it into the world’s most popular code collaboration tool. On the side, Tom is an angel investor and philanthropist, with an investment thesis focused on fighting climate change. In his spare time, Tom enjoys flying helicopters, snowboarding, and chasing his three young children around the house while making dinosaur noises.

We've been working hard these past few months to create a fantastic experience for everyone - let's take a moment to hear from our head of logistics!

"hi y'all! my name is hannah, and i'm this year's head of logistics :') i joined as part of the logistics and marketing committees for HackMIT 2019, and i'm super grateful for the opportunity to help bring HackMIT 2020 to life!

hack has given me a lot of firsts: my first time attending and organizing a hackathon, my first time using (with mild success) adobe illustrator, my first time working with a bunch of MIT student offices, and so much more. (also shout out to hack for getting me my guayakí yerba ambacebador-ship!!)

but more importantly, hack has given me a lot of experiences that i will carry on beyond my time in the organization. i was able to meet some of the brightest and kindest people around me, i was encouraged to think of my own ideas and turn them into reality, and i was given the chance to work with an amazing team that pushed me to grow and become a better leader (i hope 🥺)

HackMIT 2020 will look and feel completely different from previous years -- for good. our event is about promoting innovation and creation, and this year, our team has embodied that spirit to build a ~virtual~ hackathon where all of our hackers are just as inspired (if not more!) as they are in previous years to learn, innovate, and of course, create :’)"