YHack is an international hackathon hosted by and held at Yale that brings together 1000+ hackers and creatives from all over the world.

YHack is a festival of innovation, an arena of tech warriors, and a stage to present your big idea. Jam packed into 36 hours is a rainbow of events (talks, food, rap battles) that go on through the night while caffeinated teams hack on a Python app or program arduino-driven pumpkins to battle over Twitch.

Eligibility

  • You must be a current college student to participate. 
  • Teams can be no larger than 4.
  • You must have been accepted into YHack, and at least one member of your team must demo in person in order to be eligible for prizes. 

Requirements

Submissions must be in by 8 am on Sunday. All submissions must be published on Devpost. 

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$57,200 in prizes

1st Place Overall

iPads and Airpods for each member of the winning team!

Best Education Hack

A Kindle Paperwhite for each team member.

Best Finance Hack

Student subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal for 2 months and $496 in bitcoin! (when we bought it...)

Best Healthcare Hack

S'well bottles and Fitbit Charge 2s for each team member.

Best Civic Hack

$200 to be split evenly among the winning team members!
 
yalecode4good.org/CivicTrack/

Informa: Best Hot Technology Predictor (2)

Devise an algorithm that uses online data and APIs to identify what technologies will become commercially successful in the near future (details: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wJzRbf0aqF9ZRP4HqEuqgozKyizfAp4O/view?usp=sharing).
 
First place: one iPhone X for each team member! Second place: one $100 Amazon gift card for each team member!

Viacom: Best Use of the Viacom DataPoint Javascript Utility (3)

DataPoint (https://github.com/ViacomInc/data-point) is a Viacom open source JavaScript Utility for collecting, processing and transforming data. Be sure to check out our technical workshop Friday night at 9:35pm on DataPoint.
 
We will be bringing the winning team to our office in New York to experience "A Day at Viacom" in January. The experience will include lunch, meetings with the engineers, a tour of the facilities, including our cutting edge Experience Room, and an hour with the Viacom CTO.

Poynter Fellowship: Best Hack to Counter Fake News

Build a political, regulatory or technical hack that can be used to counter fake news and disinformation on social media and search engines.
 
The winning team will earn an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, DC to meet with members of Congress to brief them on their hack.

JetBlue: Best Use of JetBlue Low Fares and Deals Data (2)

Use JetBlue's Low Fares and Deals Data to build an awesome hack! (https://goo.gl/r1DZLZ) (https://goo.gl/sJ4mnc)
 
2 round-trip flights anywhere that JetBlue flies and $2000 in hotel credit for the winning team!

FINRA: Be a Hero - Use Data Analytics to Catch Financial Bad Guys! (4)

Are you ready to become a crime fighter in today’s rapidly growing world of electronic data? Believe it or not, technology can be a super power to help establish relationships between “bad guys” and the people who associate with them. As Superman says, “There is a right and a wrong in the universe, and the distinction is not that hard to make.” Can you identify an entire “gang” from the wide array of data available? Can you spot different types of relationships across the entities, events, and locations? Can you strengthen or weaken those connections by using your super powers to summon more data or different data?
 
Your Challenge:
With great power comes great responsibility - identify the “villians” as well as the types of relationships they have with other entities found in the data sets provided. We encourage you to use additional data sources to uncover connections between entities in the data that may have no apparent connection in the initial comparison. Data Sets will be made available once the Hackathon begins.
 
Suggested open source tools:
Apache Stanbol (we highly recommend you start with that library first unless you have previous experience with the other two),
Stanford Entity Resolution Framework, and
OpenNLP.
 
$3000 in cash equivalent prizes to winning team(s) to be split evenly among team members

Intuit: College Student Prosperity Case (2)

Provide a solution or application to help a college student become more prosperous. We will select one team to win our challenge and each member of the winning team member will receive an Echo Dot!

Stanley Black & Decker: Storage Solutions Augmented Reality

Build a Storage Solutions configurator that can work in augmented reality. We’re trying to aid our sales team to show clients how the product will look in their specific work space so they can make a buying decision. Customers are interested in how much room the product(s) will take up, and how it looks next to existing equipment.
 
Here is what we have today: https://www.storageconfiguration.com/lista/. Once a user creates their cabinet, we'd like them to see what one or multiple cabinets look like in their space using Augmented Reality. With the option to reorder the cabinets, and put them next to live objects. The most important feature is to have accurate height, width, and depth showing within the Augmented Reality so customers get an accurate representation of the product they are looking to purchase. Customers should also be able to rotate the product, so it can stand against a wall, or sit in the center of an area. Users should be able to put multiple products next to each other and reorder them, so move-ability is key. Some users may also want to leave spaces in between each product, so having full control is important. Typically, sales representatives will go onsite to a user to explain product options, so having this accessible via a tablet or mobile phone is preferred.
 
Prize: Bose bluetooth wireless headphones for each person on the winning team.

Stanley Black & Decker: Secure Android App Enabling Cloud Analysis of IoT Data

Develop an Android application that will retrieve IoT data from a phone repository, send it securely to the Cloud for analysis and return the results of the analysis securely to the phone. Intrusion-poof all parts of the application (Cloud, Android Phone and Communication).
 
Prize: Bose Bluetooth wireless headphones for each member of winning team

Stanley Black & Decker: IoT streaming & analytics dashboard

Build a stream processing app to steam IoT data.
 
Identify and alert potential anomalies using machine learning algorithms.
 
Build a dashboard to display alerts and display relevant IoT data (students have the option of using interactive queries feature of Apache Kafka).
 
Students are encouraged to use as much open source as possible like Apache, D3.JS and Spark.
 
Only one team will win. Each team member of the winning team will receive a Boss Bluetooth wireless headphone.

Vitech: Life Insurance Quoting Challenge

Insurance company Intellisurance provides its life insurance product to its 1.4M customers. They offer 4 plans - Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. The base price for all these 4 plans is fixed, but the monthly premium each individual pays for the plan varies based on factors like age, tobacco usage, pre-conditions, city, state etc. The dataset contains the details of 1.4M customers, their demographic information and other details that affect their monthly premiums. The dataset also gives the information regarding which plans were purchased. Note: The customer can purchase only one plan.
 
Challenge: Create data visualizations, use machine learning to predict the purchased plans or even the pricing of premiums, make an interface for customers to give their details and compare the plans. More details: https://v3v10.vitechinc.com/yhack
 
Prize: $3000 Amazon giftcard to the winning team

Cloudflare: Put Cloudflare in front of your hackathon project, make a Cloudflare App (7)

1. Put Cloudflare in front of your hackathon project, win a Cloudflare T-Shirt (Details: Cloudflare.com)
 
2. Make a Cloudflare App, Win an insulated Cloudflare Water Bottle (Details: Cloudflare.com/Apps)
 
Prize: The best team for each category (1&2), Win free tickets to Cloudflare Internet Summit ($500 value) in Fall, 2018 Details: Cloudflare Internet Summit
Both 1 & 2 - any team that uses it will win the small prize. Top team in each prize - free tickets to Cloudflare Internet Summit

Mirum and JWT: Can a Computer Hear How You Feel? Seeing the emotion in IM and voice (4)

Broad Challenge: Routinely teams and brands communicate through IM or voice. Whether it is in email exchanges, chat tools (Microsoft Teams / Slack), chat bots (Facebook Messenger) and Voice interfaces (Alexa, Google Assistant) we need our computers to understand the emotion underlying the communication. With international teams, or with teams coming from diverse backgrounds, it is easy to misunderstand the emotional state of the team member or customer. Our goal is to score and visualize the emotional tone of a conversation so teams can perform better and brands can react accordingly.

Data Set: We will provide a set of 5 individual conversations, 2 in voice and 2 in text

Tools: Open API for assessing emotional sentiment in voice communication or text communication https://medium.com/@sifium/top-five-emotional-sentiment-analysis-apis-116cd8d42055

Output: You’re challenge is to be able to score the emotional tone of each speaker (ie anger, joy, fear) and also if possible language tones (analytical, confident) and social tones (openness, agreeableness). A home run allows us to record a conversation and display the emotional state of the two parties speaking. We would like display on a mobile app (mobile webpage is fine) or to an i-frame for display on a website.
 
TOP TEAM WINS: Google Home Minis (1 each for up to 4 participants); Internal presentation to Mirum's CEO and CTO; Agency Introductions; External promotion including social channels and blog. 3 ADDITIONAL TEAMS WIN: Agency Introductions; External promotion including social channels and blog.

JPMorgan Chase: Finance of the Future

What will the Finance function of the future look like? Think about how machine learning methods and techniques can be used to take Finance to the next level through sophisticated forecasting, big data management, and analysis of non-traditional sources of data. Some of the specific challenges you might consider include Forecasting, Financial Reporting, and Competitor Analysis & Investor Relations. We are providing you with sample datasets (find them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JXIlbuzsXBoAAg2QBBRceL7tzQ2u3lOp?usp=sharing) that will enable you to tackle a number of important real-world problems. We will also have a more detailed description of our challenge at the JPMorgan Chase booth.
 
Prize: Bose Wireless Speakers for each team member of the winning team

Facebook: Best use of a Facebook API or SDK

The prize will be awarded to a team who best uses any of the Facebook APIs or SDKs (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apis-and-sdks/) as determined by Facebook engineering judges.
 
The top team gets:

1) All expenses paid trip to the 2018 Facebook Global Hackathon Finals in Menlo Park, California

2) $100 Amazon Gift Card for each team member

3) Facebook Swag Bags for each team member

Google: Best Google Cloud Platform Hack (2)

Submissions must use at least one Google Cloud Platform product (https://cloud.google.com/products/) or Firebase (https://firebase.google.com). We encourage you to check out App Engine (for deploying web apps and mobile backends), Cloud Storage, Datastore, and our machine learning APIs (Vision, Speech, Natural Language, Translate, and Video Intelligence). Each winning team gets 4 Google Homes and 4 Google Cardboards.

Rough Draft Ventures: Most Entrepreneurial Hack

From Facebook to Snap, Stripe to Squarespace, dozens of iconic companies have been founded by students. This prize goes to the team most likely to become future founders. We don’t expect you to start a company overnight--a "Rough Draft" will do. The most with the most entrepreneurial promise will win a Rough Draft swag bag, an invite to lunch with RDV co-founders, and the opportunity to pitch Rough Draft Ventures for up to $25K in funding.

MLH Best Domain Name registered with Domain.com

Raspberry Pi & PiHut Essentials Kit

Best IoT Device Using a Qualcomm Device

Dragonboard 410C & Power Source

Best Use of Amazon Web Services

$250 AWS Credit

Fenwick - Protecting investors using technology

Demonstrate a strong and conscious effort to shield the investor with knowledge that would protect their wallets and their belief in the integrity of the market. Any vehicle to effectively accomplish that mission is welcome, with creativity being a driving factor. The challenge is to create something that can be used to educate seasoned or fresh investors that is engaging as well as informative.

1 Tile, 1 Swell Bottle, 1 Bluetooth speaker, iPhone lens and $100 in Amazon Gift card for each member of the winning team.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

YHack Team

YHack Team

Judging Criteria

  • Practical and Useful
    How applicable is your hack to problems we're facing today?
  • Polish
    What impression do you get from the hack? Does it provide for a smooth user experience?
  • Technical Difficulty
    How technically challenging is it? Which technologies did you use?
  • Creativity
    How original is your hack? Is this a novel idea or something that's built at every hackathon?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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