WildHacks 2023 Inspires Creativity, Innovation, and Collaboration

Collaborative and fast-paced, hackathons are coding-based competitions designed to test teams’ abilities to solve problems and innovate in a convivial and supportive atmosphere. During the recent WildHacks 2023 weekend, 241 participants from 13 universities dedicated 32 hours to build functional and compelling software.

Designed as an opportunity for students to learn programming skills and develop a project in an inclusive environment, Northwestern’s interdisciplinary hackathon welcomed students of all skill levels, majors, and backgrounds.

“The goal of WildHacks has always been to create a collaborative and inclusive environment to support our talented and vibrant community of computer science (and non-computer science) students,” said director Amy Guo, a fourth-year student in computer science at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and communication studies at Northwestern’s School of Communication. “I’m so proud that we were able to bring the tech community together to inspire creativity, innovation, and collaboration at WildHacks 2023, and increase the scope of our event this year.”

Guo relaunched the event in 2022 after a multi-year hiatus. Attendance more than doubled this year, and university students across the country were invited to participate. Alongside 171 Northwestern participants, hackers joined the in-person event from DePaul University, Harper College, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Purdue University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), University of Iowa, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The WildHacks organizing team also included:

• Director of sponsorship Daniel Lee
• Director of website development Dilan Nair
• Director of design Juwon Park
• Director of programming Ryan Wong
• Director of marketing Naomi Wu
• Director of logistics Hugo Zhang
• Logistics team Vikram Achuthan, Riva Lakkadi, and Ebube Okonji
• Programming team Vikram Achuthan, Riva Lakkadi, and Joanna Soltys
• Web development team Lucy Beck, Sung Park, and Emily Zhang

“Amy Guo and her team worked tirelessly to put this event together,” said Samir Khuller, the Peter and Adrienne Barris Chair of Computer Science at Northwestern Engineering. “It was exciting to see all the teams working so hard. My memories of college are mostly about the projects I worked on with other classmates — some self-driven, some related to courses. I made lifelong friends that way.”

To support participants with varying degrees of experience, the WildHacks team shared resources and beginner-friendly tutorials. Student organizations such as Emerging Coders, Northwestern University's Student Chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (NU IEEE), Responsible AI Student Organization (RAISO), and Women in Computing (WiC) hosted workshops. A Discord-based help channel and a group of peer mentors were also available during the event to aid hackers.

The event organizers built a custom Hackathon dashboard to streamline and integrate project submissions and evaluation. A total of 45 software projects were submitted.

In the first round of judging, teams were evaluated on the criteria of technical complexity, utility, originality, design, and presentation within three tracks: entertainment/arts, sustainability, and education. The 12 top-rated projects were then ranked overall. Winners in the tech/design category earned the highest technical complexity and design scores.

Clowder, developed by the Northwestern student team Jerry Han, Andrew Li, Miya Liu, and Elysia Lopez won first place overall. The program enables students to locate relevant study sessions nearby that they can join for academic and social support.

Northwestern team members Davi Maciel Dias, Kevin Hayes, Dev Shah, and Lucas Takaysu earned second place for TAi, an artificial intelligence assistant that generates relevant questions during course lectures and provides a platform for students to submit and rank questions using an upvoting system.

Swifternships, built by Northwestern students Justin Dong, Steve Ewald, Ryan Newkirk, and Andrew Pulver, tied for second place with the TAi project. The microinternship platform connects college students interested in gaining short-term, experiential learning opportunities with startups and local businesses.

Additional winning projects included:

• The project anyone can cook! by Anthony Xie (Stanford) and Carolyn Zou (Northwestern) earned the entertainment/arts track award and crowd favorite award.
• Kacper Aniecko, Jason Pereira, Anthony Sorto, and Lukas Venckus from UIC’s Engineers For a Sustainable World won the sustainability track award for the Hydroponics Monitoring system.
• Northwestern team Zachary Gerstenfeld, Jamie Li, and Quan Pham won the education track award for the DoodleLingo tool.
• The teams that won awards for best technology are Office Hourly by Radison Akerman (UIC), Yelyzaveta Andryushchenko (UIC), Sengdao Inthavong (Northwestern), and Richard Yang (University of Wisconsin-Madison); and educAIt by the Northwestern team Felix Haba, Fortune Emmanuel-King, Christopher Sollenberger, and Jay Zou.
• Emily Chen (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Yvan Chu (Northwestern), Cindy Hu (Northwestern), and Sean Rhee (Northwestern) earned the best design award for the Flappy game.

“Many of the judges commented about how difficult it was to choose a winner given the quality of all the projects,” Guo said. “Everyone who attended our event, regardless of whether they were a prize-winner or not, should be proud of the effort and time they put in. Seeing their hard work and dedication reminded me of why it was so important for us to bring back WildHacks last year and ensure that the event continues for years to come.”

WildHacks 2023 project judges included:

• Connor Bain, assistant professor of instruction at Northwestern Engineering
• Katherine Compton, assistant professor of instruction at Northwestern Engineering
• Branden Ghena, assistant professor of instruction at Northwestern Engineering
• Joseph Hummel, professor of instruction at Northwestern Engineering

Representatives from the event sponsors also served as judges, including Jostein Baustad (Deloitte), Juliana Brondani (Poatek), Sam Goldman (SpiderRock Advisors), Sean Lyons (SpiderRock Advisors), Leandro Pereira (Poatek), and Dave Walthour (SpiderRock Advisors).

Sponsors of WildHacks 2023 included Northwestern Computer Science, The Garage at Northwestern, Deloitte, GitHub, IMC Trading, Poatek, and SpiderRock Advisors. Event partners including the Coca-Cola Company, Planting Hope Company Inc., StandOut Stickers, and Unreal Brands Inc. also provided support.

“I’m incredibly grateful for the entire organizing team who worked so hard to put on this event,” Guo said. “I know that the WildHacks organization will be left in great hands – students that are passionate about what WildHacks stands for – and I can’t wait to see how the event continues to grow and become more impactful in the future. WildHacks has become and will remain an annual CS tradition at Northwestern.”