Saratoga Excessive College’s MSET membership hosted its first-ever Well being Hack-a-thon, the place 14 colleges from throughout the Bay Space competed to make a health-inspired app in a single weekend.
College students had the prospect to win prizes price $80,000, together with a paid summer season internship with one of many occasion’s sponsors, Slingshot, and entry to coding and AI software program.
Dozens of scholars met within the Saratoga Excessive College Library on Sunday, Jan. 29, for a full day of team-building actions and pc coding earlier than presenting their apps to a panel of eight volunteer judges.
“The children had been so effectively behaved and had been specializing in their initiatives, and when the time got here to take part in actions, they had been tremendous energized,” mentioned Vipin Jain, president of Saratoga Excessive’s MSET membership. “It was good to see the power and enthusiasm amongst college students.”
He launched the immediate for the hack-a-thon the night of Friday, Jan. 27, and groups had all day Saturday to work on their apps earlier than coming to campus Sunday to compete in video games and actions.
Tanuj Siripurau and Neel Reddy, sophomores from Saratoga Excessive College, created the first-place profitable app, “ZeroResponders,” which connects volunteers to folks experiencing medical emergencies in rural areas.
Siripurau mentioned first responders can’t all the time arrive in time in rural and growing nations, and if somebody is experiencing a coronary heart assault, these further minutes can imply life or dying.
“We thought, if there’s a approach we are able to join volunteers who can administer easy medical help to folks and the folks at risk, that we might probably save numerous lives,” Siripurau mentioned.
It took the 2 Saratoga Excessive college students roughly 20 hours to complete their app.
On the finish of the competitors, groups needed to current their work to the panel of volunteer judges who work within the business.
Reddy and Siripurau gave a Powerpoint presentation explaining ZeroResponders options and makes use of earlier than Siripurau theatrically collapsed onto the ground and Reddy rushed to his help—with the assistance of the app they developed.
“Having professionals there that really do that for a job and are working with these instruments on daily basis is actually cool to listen to what they must contribute and what suggestions they've to offer,” Siripurau mentioned.
Each profitable college students can have a paid summer season internship at certainly one of Slingshot’s tech startups, and each are excited to get began.
The MSET Membership is an afterschool program at Saratoga Excessive College with practically 100 college students. The group competes in robotics competitions in addition to coding tournaments. MSET stands for “arithmetic, science, engineering and know-how.”
“The mission of Saratoga MSET is to encourage and promote college students to use their studying within the classroom of science and engineering and math and apply that to construct issues,” Jain mentioned. “To make use of your palms and use your mind to construct issues.”
Harjot Sahni, a sophomore at Saratoga Excessive College, steered to Jain that the MSET Membership host its personal hack-a-thon after he attended one at one other college.
“Saratoga has by no means had a hack-a-thon earlier than, and we don’t have a program locally but the place folks can code with one another, so I believed a hack-a-thon could be a good way to begin that,” Sahni mentioned.
Sahni spent the previous three months discovering sponsors, locking in prizes and deciding on visitor judges so the occasion might run easily.
The membership is already gearing as much as host a hack-a-thon subsequent 12 months, and hopes to make it an annual occasion.
“We’re all very pumped up and know precisely the place we wish to enhance and what we wish to do higher, how we wish to streamline ahead, how we wish to develop it extra,” Jain mentioned. “We wish to make it annual, you wager.”