Students were tired but pleased after placing second in a 24-hour competition to design an app to solve a social challenge.
From Nov. 5 – 8, five students from North Carolina Central University (NCCU) competed in the BE Smart Hackathon in Charlotte.
A hackathon is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a short period of time, in this case 24 hours. Hackathons originated in June 1999 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, according to the website Hackernoon.com.
The members of “Team Albert and Friends” from NCCU competed against 61 other teams from 43 historically Black colleges or universities (HBCUs). Their task: develop an app that uses artificial intelligence and allows people to search for food pantries near them. In addition, their app can scan receipts and offer recipes based on the food items obtained and even show nearby stores that accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
Manuj Mishra, a sophomore majoring in mathematics with an emphasis in programming, focused on connecting the AI component. The NCCU team also had to figure out how to connect Google Maps to the app.
“We did stuff we had never done before,” Mishra said. “Everyone in their respective areas gained a new level of skills.”
The NCCU team made sure their app was smartphone friendly.
“Most people of low income don’t have a computer,” said Ahsan Nadeem, a junior majoring in both mathematics and computer engineering. “(The app) is also friendly on older phones.”
Nadeem helped make the website user-friendly and functional. As for sleep, he didn’t get any during the 24-hour competition.
“I usually don’t sit at a computer for 24 hours,” Nadeem said. “You have a first time for everything.”
Other members of Team Albert and Friends were Betelihem Wereta, Jaylen Johnson and Albert Pena-Charrez.
“None of them had competed before in anything of this nature,” said Professor Alade Tokuta, Ph.D., who accompanied the team to Charlotte and stayed awake for the 24-hour competition.
Teams were judged on the impact of their app, presentation, technical complexity, documentation, look, feel and quality, according to the Black Enterprise website.
Placing second in the hackathon came with rewards, including $2,000 per team member from McDonald’s and $30,000 shared among the team from PepsiCo. Mishra plans to spend his winnings on a trip to India while Nadeem intends to buy a new computer.
24-hour App Design Competition Nets NCCU No. 2 spot
