PantherHacks 2020 Seeks to Foster Innovation During Uncertain Times

Jonathan Fields/Staff Writer

Stacked pizza boxes, paper plates, energy drinks and two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew are the mainstays which are typically found at weekend-long software engineering challenges known as “hackathons.” 

These events have grown increasingly popular in recent years due to their atmosphere of camaraderie and friendly competition in order to innovate and solve problems with technology for the common good.

While last weekend’s PantherHacks hackathon at FIU was forced to transition to a virtual format, the event featured some informative presentations from senior FIU staff and yielded some exciting projects from students, looking for ways to use technology to better understand and mitigate the COVID-19 crisis.

“It’s a little more challenging now to engage with students,” said Valeria Espina Stevenson, FIU’s executive director and head of strategic initiatives. “However, this gives them an opportunity to see faces and lets them know FIU is still here.”

PantherHacks was organized by student technology organization Upsilon Pi Epsilon in collaboration with the dean’s office. It was sponsored in part by Google Cloud, which established a fund for COVID-19 hackathons. 

The project submissions were grouped into four categories: health, community, education and productivity.

The first place prize of $500 in FIU scholarships was awarded to Team Data Dogs. FIU students Eitan Flor and Jerry Contreras built an app using Google’s cloud services to track and predict the likelihood of coronavirus infections based on information including zip codes.

The second place prize of priority parking during finals week went to Team ABF, led by veteran hackathon attendee and recent FIU computer science graduate Fulton Garcia along with hackathon first-timers Arturo Portelles and Bruce Berrios. 

The team built an app called CovidSync, which aggregated services for the Spanish-speaking and bilingual communities by translating and consolidating information about jobs, COVID-19 testing and other important resources.

“Looking at a city like Miami, we have a lot of people that come from different backgrounds that may not speak the language or may not have the level of education that others have, so we wanted to make this application as simple as possible in order to target that demographic,” said Garcia.

Team ABF’s app was also chosen by Google for their best use of Google Cloud technology and received the prize of Google Cloud branded Patagonia backpacks and water bottles.

This and many other exciting apps and ideas were put forth by the hackathon attendees who spent all weekend cobbling together the many working parts necessary to turn their visions into working products.

Winners for each of the four individual COVID-19 innovation categories, as well as their prizes, are listed below:

Health Category:

The Adazas – Leila and Liana Adaza

Prize: Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet

Productivity Category:

Vibe Master – Daniel Jimenez

Prize: Audio-Technica Headphones

Community Category: 

HomBound – Janeth Arriola, Roland Aroche, Ekaterina Banks

Prize: Amazon Echo