This 24-hour competition brings together individuals and teams with a common goal to create projects they are passionate about with the opportunity to win various prizes.
This marked the 6th year of Temple University’s student-led hackathon. Starting in 2019, OwlHacks has seen incredible projects, attracted a strong turnout, and received immense support from our sponsors and university.
“A hackathon to me is a competition where people with varying backgrounds and experience with computers come together to form a team. We compete with others to see who can create the best project within 24 hours,” said Lincoln McLoud, a senior computer science major.
The criteria used to judge the projects are based on functionality and feasibility, technical difficulty, design and user experience, and concept & originality. College students at any level, both graduate and undergraduate, can take part in this event.
This year’s OwlHacks Hack-A-Thon had 32 teams with eight winning prizes and awards. The winning teams won under categories ranging from ‘Best Inclusive Education’ to ‘Best Strategic Trading.’ All of the project submissions are viewable on the website, Devpost, where the winners are noted.
Senior Computer Science majors, Vasilios Kladas, Dex Giglio, and McCloud won first place for ‘Best Strategic Trading.’
“My favorite part is being able to create something with my team. It is a lot of work but we also find ways to have fun and laugh together which really makes it a great time,” said Kladas.
Their program is a Python-based trading algorithm simulator using backtesting and the Yahoo finance API.
“Our project this year allowed program users to run certain algorithms on historical stock data,” said Giglio. He also mentioned how he designed the user interface and implemented a few of the stock trading algorithms.
Teamwork is an essential part of the process, as there can be challenges and bumps in the road. Being able to assign certain tasks to each team member helps the process work smoother.
“I was the brains behind the entire operation,” joked McCloud. “Nah, in all seriousness though I was a team player in the competition just like Vasil and Dex. I was responsible for adding a program called Python back tester which is tasked with simulating a stock over a certain period of time. I also created a strategy that is used to trade the stock.”
The groups elaborately explain their inspiration for their designs and ideas, what it does, how they put them together, challenges they faced, accomplishments they were proud of, what they learned from their experience, and what’s next for the future of their project on the website.
For example, a team that won “Best Smart Cities” came up with a project called Inclusifind, to establish a platform that can easily show places where students can go do work or be able to access their specific accommodations. In the future, the team hopes to make a larger nationwide application of their current version to help as many people as they can, as was noted on the website.
OwlHacks’ Hack-a-Thon competition brings together individuals and teams with a common goal to create projects they are passionate about with the opportunity to win various prizes. Through the 24 hours they have to put their projects together, teams face challenges and build problem-solving skills in order to work through challenges. Teams and individuals can gain valuable experiences from this event that can benefit them in their personal and professional lives carrying forward.
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