Students Win Hackathon

Written by Professor Kanemoto, Merced College

Hackathons are a place where students can work as a team and be able to grow and show their programming skills.  It was an adventure for .. .. and .. to enter this hackathon.  They learned about the hackathon, and how to prepare from our CAHSI Advocate Alisson Ross.

“The club has pushed me to be more consistent with my learning!”~Mulero Alamou

Alisson is our CAHSI Advocate, and helps to run our CAHSI Computer Science Club at Merced College.  She recently prepared ReactJS workshops for the students, where they created their own web applications.  Here is a link to her online resource of the “Intro to ReactJS Guide”. 

On Alisson’s website, you can find links to the other web application development guides and her other projects.

– Pictured snapshot of Alisson’s website

Alisson Ross is a strong CAHSI Advocate, and completes projects centered around assisting students gain technology skills centered around web application development, and gain self-efficacy as developers. She is the Engineering Director for HackMerced, and assists with web development, recruitment, and workshops for HackMerced.

– Pictured: Alisson Ross Salazar’s LinkedIn profile snapshot

The hackathon took place March 3-5th at UC Merced, students had 36 hours to create a project in any of  the track categories; Health & wellness, Agriculture, or Business & Finance.  

Work to put on a hackathon of this size takes planning, and Alisson Ross is a part of the HackMerced IT team, and as the Engineering Director, assists in planning the hackathon, workshops at the hackathon, as well as the hackmerced website development.

In the weeks leading up to the event is when our Advocate Alisson Ross started getting the students at Merced College ready to compete.  Brushing up on your tech skills, especially in the areas of web application development, are especially useful in a hackathon like this.

She held workshops during the Computer Science CAHSI Club hours on how to install, use, and create things using the very powerful ReactJS libraries.  Providing a step-by-step guide, and allowing students to work through the activities to get things installed and working on their computers.

2 groups of students from Merced College won in this 2023 HackMerced hackathon’s “category name” and “Moonshot category”.  

– Pictured left to right: Ishan Chawla, Alexander Lerma, Yeng Her, and Jaime Gomez

“Our team created a browser game by using multiple scripts with precompiled libraries to capture movement integrated into an aesthetically pleasing and interactive website. It was important to be passionate and motivated to keep up the work and finish the project in a timely manner while having fun.” ~ Yeng Her

– Pictured left to right: Emi Rueth, Princess Thomas, Mulero Alamou, and Joseph Saada won with their project titled “Leaf Buster AI“ – put the paragraph they are sending me here and comment on it

“Leaf Buster AI is an application designed to distinguish between two apple leaf diseases, leaf rot and leaf blotch, using machine learning, specifically image recognition. The application accurately identifies affected areas of the leaf and identifies the specific disease present. In addition, the application features a trivia game that challenges users to test their knowledge of these diseases. Our team, consisting of me, Mulero Alamou, Joseph Saada, Emi Rueth, and Princess Thomas, collaborated on the project. Joseph and I focused on the frontend logic, while Emi and Princess worked on the UI and frontend design. Despite the challenging timeframe of just 36 hours, we were able to complete the project and even earned an award in one of the categories. The experience was both enjoyable and unforgettable, pushing us to step outside of our comfort zones and grow as a team.”

We are super proud of all of the students who attended the hackathon, and of Alisson for doing such a great job with our workshops and assisting in running the hackathon.  Until our next post, keep hacking!