The Brandeis MakerLab and the Brandeis International Business School recently hosted the 6th annual hackathon for social impact, DeisHacks. On Feb. 3rd to 5th, Brandeis students, as well as other students from accredited academic institutions, came together in the Brandeis Library or via the hackathon’s Discord channel for the hybrid event. This year boasted record-high participation, with 160 in-person participants, 238 online participants and 33 total submitted projects.
The goal of DeisHacks is distinct from other major hackathons in the Greater Boston area, such as HackMIT. DeisHacks participants, or “hackers,” are paired with 14 different local non-profit organizations to develop technological, creative or business solutions to pain-points experienced by these companies. The full list of non-profits is Land’s Sake Farm, The Community Day Center of Waltham, Waltham Chamber of Commerce, Opportunities for Inclusion, Waltham Rotary Club, Clipper Ship Foundation, Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, Boston Benevolent Chiropractic Clinic, The Haven Project, New England Chinese American Association, Deaconess Abundant Life, Vision Volunteer Alliance and Vilson Groh Institute.
Director of the MakerLab and Adjunct Professor in the Brandeis International Business School Ian Roy described the objective in an interview with The Hoot, saying, “Instead of having a single hackathon challenge, this event’s theme fused design thinking, digital fabrication and social impact to work on real-world solutions for non-profit companies. Each hackathon team chose a design challenge from Waltham’s diverse non-profit community they find compelling to focus on.”
The total prize pool was $4000 sponsored by Mitre Corporation, a systems-based security company with applications in government, academia and industry, and Pegasystems, a company that provides AI-based automation and software for customer service management applications. Each team competed for the hackathon’s top prize of $1000 and six additional $500 prizes.
The team that won the top prize of Best Overall was Charles River Museum Narratives of Innovation: Youth Art Exhibition. The four members of the team were Roland Calia-Bogan ‘25, Erica Egleston [year], Arnell Reid [year] and Noah Goble [year]. This team’s project involved working with the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in order to bolster diverse narratives regarding industry in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The exhibition would feature art made from young adults in the Waltham locality under short time constraints, and would display the participants’ artwork two to three weeks after an Opening Night event. This opportunity would be supported by a grant covering the costs of art supplies in order to take financial strain off the museum.
In an interview with The Hoot, Calia-Bogan expanded on his experience during the hackathon. DeisHacks was his first hackathon and he enjoyed fine-tuning his problem-solving and organizational skills in order to advance in all aspects of the project. “My overall takeaway from the event was that hackathons are just as the name implies: a marathon of problem solving that frequently won’t be straightforward and will make you step out of your comfort zone and what you’re studying,” he concluded.
The team that won Highest Organizational Impact was SeeU, which was created by Shreya Ahuja ‘25, Marco QIn ‘24, Bishal Baral ‘23, Mahmoud Salah ‘24 and Phoebe Ogunsanwo ‘25. This team worked on a solution for the Vision Volunteer Alliance, which is an organization that seeks to foster meaningful connections with international volunteers from China that are in the U.S. with young orphans from rural regions in China. The volunteers visit the children every summer in order to serve as mentors and create strong connections with them.
The technological solution the team came up with was an app called “SeeU,” which helps gamify the process of connecting volunteers to young students in orphanages in China. The app has a pool of interactive learning games such as drawing, cultural, science and chatting games with point-based incentivization that volunteers could participate in with the children. The team noted that access to technology was a constraint in these orphanages, so they implemented multiple user login technology so that multiple students could participate at once.
Both Ahuja and Baral had past experience with hackathons. Ahuja described how her past hackathon experience largely focused on implementing technical solutions while this year’s DeisHacks gave her the opportunity to solve organizational pain-points. Baral described how his abilities evolved from his participation in DeisHacks in 2020 by sharing how he learned not only to implement technical solutions but also describe solutions via storytelling.
The team that won Best Use of Emerging Technology was The Charles Museum App, which was created by Charlotte Topchik [year], Qiusheng Zhu [year] and Varun Prasad Eduganti ‘23. This team’s goal was to increase engagement at the Charles River Museum. The emerging technology they implemented was augmented reality, which enhanced viewer engagement in the exhibitions by adding a virtual layer to an existing real-world experience.
Eduganti shared his experience during the hackathon with The Hoot. He used his product development skills to help build a prototype that can be iteratively tested to better refine the product. “Applying classroom learnings and skills in the real world is critical, as things will go wrong. Still, the ability to adapt and learn is my takeaway, especially when your impact makes a difference in a community,” he reflected.
The team that won Best Marketing Hack was Land’s Sake Farm Service Promotion Project, which was created by Frank Asamoah [year], Harry Yu [year] and Le Qiu [year]. This team’s goal was to solve customer satisfaction pain-points for the Land’s Sake Farm in connecting customers to their harvest cycles and promoting their yearly produce. In order to accomplish this, they created a plant monitoring system using reused cameras, a digital forum and a website connecting Land’s Sake employees to customers. They also implemented a new social marketing strategy using a QR code in order to broaden the social impact.
Qiu described his experience as a first-time hacker: “This is my first time joining a hackathon; I don’t know anything about computer science. However I am a Business major student, thus I use my business skill to set strategy and plan to help the farm. [This] hackathon let me apply my business skills into the real world. It’s an unforgettable and wonderful experience for me.”
Yu was also a first-time hacker who is majoring in Computer Science. He felt that the hackathon not only enriched his technical skills but also widened his breadth of experiences; he described staying up till 5 a.m. with teammates in order to finish the final project. “This is a hard challenge, but it’s just like coffee, like liquorice–it’s the bitter but rewarding part of it that I love,” he shared.
The team that won the Hidden Gem Award was Land of Thousand Hills Collectibles, which was created by Zachary Hovatter [year], Omer Barash [year], Christina Lin [year], Pratyay Bannerjee [year] and Djounia Saint-Fleurant [year]. Land of Thousand Hills has a policy where every dollar spent goes back to the community to support the town’s homeless youth. This team wanted to emphasize the positive impact of supporting this business to customers by creating collectible cards that allow people to win a small prize.
Barash described his experience collaborating with others for this project, saying, “I think that having people with different backgrounds allowed us to complement things nicely; I could bring marketing and business thinking to the project, while other people brought graphic design, coding. Synergy is very important and something that DeisHacks strongly promotes.”
