CPIS Students Team Up with Stony Brook Students to Attend and Win a Category at Major League Hacking Hackathon Event

The hackathon was a great experience. Not only were there sessions and activities to attend, but also representatives from technology companies such as Google Cloud Platform, Zebra, and Softheon, which had freebies and giveaways.

The focus of any hackathon is competition, and it often has a theme and many categories that a team or individual can enter. The team listed above went with the category Machine Learning. The team developed a web-based application entitled "CampNav" to help with campus navigation. The system allowed a user to take a picture with their phone of any building on campus, and then the user would upload the photo and the system would send back information regarding the building. For example, if the user took a photo of the library, the app would return information telling the user what building it was. The system was developed using Flask (a Python library) for the backend, React (JavaScript library) for the front end, and trained AutoML from Google Cloud Platform to identify the building.

The team won an award for "Best Use of Google Cloud Platform." Jeffrey from FSC said: "I went into the competition with very little knowledge of Python, and was able to learn so much from being a part of the team. Jerry, also from FSC, was the driving force and I we all learned so much from him."
Attending the hackathon was a fantastic learning experience. Farmingdale students are encouraged to attend hackathon events. A Hackathon Club is currently being formed for students in CPIS to promote these competitions, and the Computer Systems Department is currently planning to host a hackathon here at FSC.

Jeffrey Haywood, CPIS Farmingdale State College; Jerry Turcios, Applied Math FSC; Spencer Williams, Stony Brook University; and Kelvin Porter, Stony Brook, formed a team and attended a hackathon hosted by Major League Hacking, at the CEWIT building at Stony Brook, February 17, 2019. Beyond the competition, there were many fun workshops to take part:

• A talk about big data and machine learning.
• Creating your own blockchain.
• A cup-stacking event.
• A session entitled "No Light," which included attempting to recreate a website sample they had shown, without being able to observe your progress. Basically, making a website in the dark.