Hackathon

CEC students

�鶹��Ƶ students ran with the big dogs at defense hackathon

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 16:22:00 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ students ran with the big dogs at defense hackathon Jennifer Pocock Thu, 09/11/2025 - 12:22

When the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) convened the first round of its high-tech competition at Fuse at �鶹��Ƶ Square, they should have known it would end with a strong George �鶹��Ƶ showing.

From left to right: Ricardo Vega, Chris Martin, Noah Kabiri, Van Tran, Phuoc Nguyen, and NDIA judge. Photo provided.

The NDIA Hackathon is an internationally renowned competition that welcomes teams from every sector—not just colleges. That means that some of the country’s greatest minds in professional national defense industries and the military line up against ambitious young students to see who has the best vision for securing our future.

In this case, that project came from a team of George �鶹��Ƶ students led by Noah Kabiri, a newly minted sophomore in computer science, with an idea for context-based visualization. How the team came together was kismet.

Kabiri met Chris Martin, a senior in cybersecurity engineering, when looking for someone to join him. The two happened to be working at the same table as Ricardo Vega, a George �鶹��Ƶ PhD student in electrical engineering, who had teamed up with Major Phuoc Nguyen from the Department of Defense (DoD) and Van Tran, CEO of Advanced Cambridge Technologies.

“Halfway through the competition we realized that we were all doing similar things and using similar platforms. We decided that we would be a more competitive team if we combined,” Karbiri said. “We got together and swept the competition.”

Each team in the hackathon had to come up with a product that would be marketable and meet some need for the DoD. They then had to market, present, and sell the product to a panel of non-technical judges from the industry and military. Kabiri’s team, SpecDOps Force, addressed a need in the ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) category.

Their product was an SaaS (software as a service) that takes footage and video feeds from anywhere—drone surveillance video, infrared, geospatial satellite images, security cameras, body cams, and more—and analyzes the environment.

“We had machine learning detection models pick up objects like vehicles, weapons, and faces,” Kabiri said. Their software is important because it can determine threat levels based on environmental contexts. “For example, if you were deploying it on a mission in the desert, detecting firearms would be normal because everyone has firearms in war. If you put it in an airport, however, seeing firearms would be bad.”

Out of the 683 registered participants, the George �鶹��Ƶ-led team took third place. They were separated from second place by hundredths of a point—it was extremely close. This is gratifying, considering that first place went to a well-established corporate team from a major tech company and second place went to a mix of government contractors. Compared to that, an ad-hoc team headed by George �鶹��Ƶ undergrads is nothing short of incredible.

Kabiri hopes that there is a future for their innovation. While the competition only looks for proof of concept over the 72-hour project period, he thinks that he can take it forward. “I don’t see any other products out there that are context-driven. It’s also really adaptable,” he said. “Right now I’m researching how to add walking gaits onto it, where you can determine who someone is based on how they move.”

Though Kabiri is still deciding exactly where to specialize his studies or whether he should pick up a second major in math (it’s only the beginning of his second year, after all), he seems to be headed in a productive direction.

Topics

U.S. Department of Defense

competitions

Military

Artificial Intelligence

invention

CEC students

Five George �鶹��Ƶ cybersecurity students hack their way to Boston

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 14:38:39 +0000

Five George �鶹��Ƶ cybersecurity students hack their way to Boston Jennifer Pocock Thu, 07/31/2025 - 10:38

The Country to Country (C2C) Capture the Flag (CTF) contest is an international competition that issues challenges to code, decrypt, search, hack, and reverse engineer their way through as many challenges as possible.

(C2C) CTF contestants gathered from across the globe to solve pernicious problems. Photo provided.

�鶹��Ƶ 500 students from nearly 100 countries, ranging from inexperienced freshmen to PhD candidates in cybersecurity, competed individually in the qualifying rounds. Only the top 100—including five from �鶹��Ƶ—were accepted into the finals. Four went to Boston for the competition, held this year at Northeastern University.

The College of Engineering and Computing students Gael Abboud, Sanjay Kumar Samala, Nhat Le, and Jonah Wilbur represented the green and gold, but were all placed on different teams. (Amaan Abbas also made the cut but could not attend.)

“The organizers were amazing,” said Abboud, who is a graduate student pursuing her master's in systems engineering through the Accelerated Master's Program. She explained that they try to make it a truly international and cooperative competition. Ideally, each team would contain people from different countries.

“Somehow, I ended up on a team with two other people from Virginia,” Abboud said with a laugh. “They came from Virginia Commonwealth University and William and Mary.”

Her Virginia-strong team did the state proud. Over a day of competition, they sometimes worked together and sometimes apart to solve as many problems as possible from across various skill sets.

It’s not just coding. Abboud described one of the challenges. “It was open-source intelligence, which is really just fancy Googling. They set a scene where we had to find a very certain scooter repair shop in Boston. They told us that it was near a metro stop and in sight of an Indian restaurant. Seems like it should be easy, but it wasn’t!”

They also had to track down things like the price of the building and the vice president of the company that sold it more than 60 years ago. “No one solved that one.”

In the end, Abboud’s team landed in fourth place: an admirable showing when the contestants represent some of the best from around the globe. “I was so disappointed,” she sighed. “There was less than one point separating us from the third-place team.”

Abboud said that she loved every minute and would tell anyone curious about hack-a-thons to try qualifying for this Capture the Flag event.

“It may seem intimidating, but there are challenges for any skill level,” she said. “You don’t know what it will be like if you don’t try. Don’t stress if you don’t know something. People are happy to walk you through how they solved it.”

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�鶹��Ƶ Students, Grads Claim Top Prizes in TraCCC’s 2023 Anti-Counterfeiting Hackathon

Andrew J Schappert — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 21:27:32 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ Students, Grads Claim Top Prizes in TraCCC’s 2023 Anti-Counterfeiting Hackathon Andrew J Schappert Tue, 11/14/2023 - 16:27

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Louise I. Shelley

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Trading under the team name of CyberCrustaceans, �鶹��Ƶ students Anthony Perry and Daniel Horvath—both Honors College students—defeated five finalist teams to win the $20,000 top prize at the Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon 2023 (BDC 2023). The hackathon, a nationally advertised competition that began in September, brought together individuals and teams to develop technology-based solutions for combating counterfeiting.

From left, Anthony Perry and Daniel Horvath, aka Team CyberCrustaceans, won the top prize in the Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon 2023. Photos by Ayman Rashid/Office of University Branding

BDC 2023 was organized by the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) in partnership with strategy and analytic firm Blue Clarity, which administered the competition. Major sponsors included e-commerce and technology company Amazon.com Inc. and the Global Innovation Policy Center, a department within the U.S. Chamber of Commerce devoted to promoting innovation, creativity, and strong intellectual property protections.

CyberCrustaceans’ $20,000 winning entry, called Veritas Ex Machina, was deemed by a panel of practitioner judges to be a breakthrough combination of X-ray technology, optical scanning, and artificial intelligence designed to sift through enormous volumes of small parcels to detect the likelihood of counterfeit product.

The $10,000 Student Prize, SafeURL, was won by a team of �鶹��Ƶ graduate students called Tech Titans who tackled the digital domain of counterfeiting with a system designed to uncover fraudulent websites. By employing sophisticated machine-learning algorithms, they crafted a user-friendly platform that helps users discern the legitimacy of URLs, enhancing online security and trust.

The Tech Titans team, which also took home the $2,500 Crowdsource Prize, included Siva Satyanarayana Raju Pusapati, Sampath Sai Yelleti, Hemanth Kumar Reddy Tiyyagura, Chandra Kiran Viswanath Balusu, Anusha Bhavanam, and Poojasree Keerithipati.

The $10,000 CINA prize for research, sponsored by �鶹��Ƶ’s Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center (CINA), went to �鶹��Ƶ students Salem Abdul-Bak and Krishna Purohit (also an Honors College student) and for the Legitima project, which bridges technology with policy. The program uses serialized tokens and a Chrome extension that functions as a digital passport for products, enhancing consumer trust and enabling verification of authenticity. In addition to $10,000, the students receive a semester of mentoring by CINA experts and the opportunity to present their project to a wider audience.

Three other teams with promising concepts won honorable mention prizes worth $1,000 each, bringing the total prize money to $45,500.

Support and prize money came from a variety of organizations including Amazon, Statista, Mapbox, the National Crime Prevention Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center, and the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies.

TraCCC founding director Louise Shelley converses with Patrick Kilbride, senior vice president of the Global Innovation Policy Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Hackathon With Purpose

This is the second Hackathon TraCCC has hosted. The competition featured some 80 contestants—faculty and students from many different universities—registering as teams or individuals and working for more than two months to perfect their ideas. Six competitors making the finals were non-�鶹��Ƶ.

The competition has two goals: Bringing attention to the serious harms caused by counterfeiting, and encouraging students and others to develop solutions using technology and policy to address the problem.

Counterfeiting is a global problem: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5 percent of world trade or roughly $464 billion a year. Many if not most of those counterfeit goods present a danger to the public. As an example, during the COVID-19 crisis, TraCCC researchers were able to prevent 67 million counterfeit masks for frontline workers from entering the U.S. market.

“We need the data to show how this problem operates so we can begin to address it,” said TraCCC founding director Louise Shelley of the Hackathon. “And working together, we need public, private, and research partnerships to begin to solve it.”

She added that an additional—and unexpected— benefit of the exercise is to involve technology-oriented students who discover an affinity for policy. She said the participants praised �鶹��Ƶ and appreciated the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

Six finalist teams presented their solutions at �鶹��Ƶ Square in Arlington, Virginia, on November 4 during Hackathon Demo Day, defending them under questioning from a panel of judges that included leading practitioners from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Customs and Border Patrol, and Amazon. While the judges deliberated, a series of notable speakers, including Summer Kostelnik, policy advisor from the White House Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement, offered their views on trends in counterfeiting and what needs to be done to counter them.

Hackathon 3 will be announced later in 2024.

Topics

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Schar School of Policy and Government

Schar School News for November 2023

Campus News

entrepreneurship

�鶹��Ƶ Square

Schar School Featured Stories

Tech Talent Investment Program (TTIP)

Student teams tackle tech industry challenges at PatriotHacks 2023

Teresa Donnellan — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 19:05:36 +0000

Student teams tackle tech industry challenges at PatriotHacks 2023 Teresa Donnellan Fri, 10/13/2023 - 15:05

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Kamaljeet Sanghera

Liza Wilson Durant

More than 500 students, nine sponsors, and 50 volunteers gathered on �鶹��Ƶ’s Fairfax Campus for the fifth annual PatriotHacks hackathon from October 6–8. After working for 36 hours straight, student teams presented 70 projects to a panel of judges and received feedback and prizes.

“Each year, PatriotHacks continues to grow, and students accept the challenge and create truly innovative projects to fulfill the various tracks. The level of technological innovation seen in this one weekend is proof of the caliber of research, work, and experience at �鶹��Ƶ,” said event organizer Kamaljeet Sanghera, executive director of �鶹��Ƶ’s Institute for Digital Innovation and a professor of information sciences and technology. She added, “We are very grateful to our sponsors for their contributions. Their support is critical to both the success of this event and the work we do at �鶹��Ƶ.”

People at the Amazon Web Services workshop. Photo by Kamaljeet Sanghera

Student organizers worked tirelessly to make the event a success. Computer science major Krishna Purohit, who was in charge of sponsor outreach, noted this year’s event yielded more than triple the number of submitted projects than last year’s hackathon. “We're excited to scale the hackathon and make it one of the largest in Virginia,” he said.

Student teams designed solutions for problems presented by event sponsors, such as Peraton, Amazon, Special Competitive Studies Project–SCSP, Arcfield, GEICO, Salesforce, and the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) NoVa Node.

"CCI NoVa Node is making significant investments in hands-on cybersecurity experiences for the tech talent pipeline in the [Northern Virginia] region,” said Liza Wilson Durant, associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement and director of the Northern Virginia Node of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI). “Events like PatriotHacks are an important way to build technical capacity in students, share innovative ideas across disciplines, and support the development of the diverse pipeline of talent we are cultivating in Northern Virginia."

�鶹��Ƶ students Akhil Rachure, Sai Kumar Kattera, Sai Preethi Pantangi, and Kevlar Nalankilli joined forces for the hackathon; their team won two tracks, hosted by Peraton and Salesforce, respectively, with two different projects.

From left, Sai Preethi Pantangi, Akhil Rachure, Salesforce representative Brian Coughlin, Sai Kumar Kattera, and Kevlar Nalankilli. Photo by Akhil Rachure

“It was a grueling 36-hour marathon of brainstorming, coding, and innovation, and finally, all the hard work paid off,” said Rachure, who is majoring in data analytics engineering.

“PatriotHacks 2023 was special and different from other hackathons I’ve been to. There were lots of track options to choose from, including sponsored ones and �鶹��Ƶ tracks, with experts around to help us out,” said Kattera, who is majoring in computer science. “We all worked together really well, and that’s the main reason we could build our product in just 36 hours. This experience taught me that with a strong team effort, anything is possible.”

The team won the Peraton track with their project, an application meant to help travelers plan safer trips.

“The app displays routes from point A to B and also highlights danger zones, helping users avoid potential crashes,” said Rachure.

The team won a track hosted by Salesforce with a related project. Pantangi, a computer science major, explained, “We leveraged Tableau to craft a comprehensive dashboard. This dashboard is designed to empower car companies with valuable insights into car crashes, categorized by model and body type.”

For students new to hackathons, PatriotHacks 2023 made a positive impression. Computer science major Nathan Albe, who won the Best Powered AI track with teammates Mohamed Shaik, Sanjay Mohan Kumar, and Sami Saifudin, said, “This was my first hackathon, and I can say it was a great first experience.... I felt like I learned how to effectively work toward a project and goal, not just by myself but in a team environment.”

Albe also said, “Thank you to all of the volunteers and sponsors at PatriotHacks for creating such a memorable event. I loved working with my team, and I learned so much. Can't wait for next year!”

Topics

information sciences and technology

computer science

Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA)

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

Strategic Direction

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program

Registration Open: �鶹��Ƶ’s TraCCC Launches Second Annual Hackathon to Fight Counterfeiters

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 15:07:37 +0000

Registration Open: �鶹��Ƶ’s TraCCC Launches Second Annual Hackathon to Fight Counterfeiters Andrew J Schappert Wed, 08/30/2023 - 11:07

Registration is open for the second annual Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon, an event that brings together individuals and teams from around the country in a competition with a vital mission—to interrupt illicit counterfeiting and trafficking—and for a chance to win $50,000 in awards.

The Schar School of Policy and Government’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at �鶹��Ƶ is partnering with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Innovation Policy Center to challenge teams from academic institutions, companies, and other affiliations to design and propose novel technical and policy solutions that prevent counterfeit and pirated goods from entering the stream of commerce and reaching the hands of consumers. Strategy and analytic firm Blue Clarity returns to administer the competition.

Contestants will also be encouraged to create tools that help recognize the spoofing of official U.S. government websites, trademarks, and other services. The winning entry will win the grand prize of $20,000 for the solution a panel of expert judges select as the most effective, scalable, and creative. Other cash prizes will be awarded in a number of categories.

“Counterfeiting is a crime that affects us all. This hackathon will bring students together with policymakers, academic institutions, domain and private sector experts, and other professionals to raise awareness of the threats and generate powerful new ideas to stop this criminal activity,” said University Professor Louise Shelley, founding director of the TraCCC. “The results will also be used to inform our ongoing research on counterfeit and other criminal supply chain networks.”

This year, challenge organizers are looking for novel technical solutions, such as new technology to advance counterfeited product identification devices or advanced algorithms to secure supply chains and identify counterfeit goods. Solutions offered in the competition should have direct applicability to stated challenges that government agencies like the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and others are actively working to overcome. Last year’s winning entry, chosen from 11 finalists of 30 entries, was a search engine extension that exposed fraudulent pharmacies and disrupted the flow of counterfeit medicine in the U.S.

The contest is important—counterfeiting remains a persistent retail-industry problem around the world. Counterfeiters deprive brand owners of the value of their intellectual property, compete unfairly with honest entrepreneurs, and may place the health and safety of consumers at risk. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5 percent of world trade or roughly $464 billion a year.

This 2023 hackathon challenge launched in August and is open to anyone. Registration for the event is free.

See the Bring Down Counterfeiting 2023 Hackathon registration form for event for competition details and to register. Teams will have several weeks to learn more from an array of public and private-sector experts and stakeholders about the global scope of the counterfeiting challenge, the societal and economic risks, industry best practices, and more. Full hackathon rules, submission guidelines, and judging criteria can be found on the Bring Down Counterfeiting 2023 Hackathon registration form.

Interested in joining as a sponsor or getting involved? Please contact expeditionhacks@blueclarity.io. Stay informed via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.

Read �鶹��Ƶ/Amazon hackathon is a win for �鶹��Ƶ students for last year’s inaugural hackathon results.

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Louise I. Shelley

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Topics

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Trafficking

�鶹��Ƶ Square

Schar School of Policy and Government

Schar School News for August 2023

Campus News

Schar School Featured Stories

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program

�鶹��Ƶ teams shine at three major hackathons

Teresa Donnellan — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 13:46:19 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ teams shine at three major hackathons Teresa Donnellan Thu, 06/22/2023 - 09:46

The �鶹��Ƶ Nation’s strength was undeniable at several hackathons in spring 2023. �鶹��Ƶ computer science, cybersecurity engineering, information technology, and mechanical engineering students won challenges on March 25 at the University of Virginia (UVA), on April 7-9 at the University of Maryland (UMD), and on April 29-30 at Drexel University.

What’s a hackathon?

Hackathons take place over a limited span of time, usually 24 hours. Teams comprising several students choose which “tracks” they want to compete in, with each track delineating a different challenge. Hackathons are generally free for participants, with travel, accommodation, and food provided, making them a relatively equitable opportunity for students.

At the outset of a hackathon, sponsoring or organizing bodies present on the different tracks and offer workshops on relevant tools for the challenges at hand. The events are thus valuable networking opportunities where participants meet not only industry professionals, but also like-minded entrepreneurial peers.

Over the course of the event, teams build a minimum viable product, submit their project through GitHub, and create a DevPost page to display their project before presenting to a panel of judges during an exhibition period. At the end of the event, prizes are awarded for many of the tracks.

HooHacks 2023 at the University of Virginia

HooHacks team. Photo provided

HooHacks, put on by a student group at the University of Virginia of the same name, comprises six levels of challenges and includes a special element sponsored by Fannie Mae. The event took place over 24 hours, starting at noon on March 25.

Two �鶹��Ƶ teams, one comprising upperclassmen and one comprising freshmen, brought home wins including at least $500, respectively.

Seniors Jhonn Cardozo and Ronald Santos Garcia and junior Maya Crosby took home $500 and the pride of winning the primary challenge in one of the 50 biggest hackathons in the country. After being announced as winners, the team was approached by Fannie Mae staffers, who told them they were extremely impressed with their performance.

Snagging Best Overall prize at HooHacks was a team of �鶹��Ƶ freshmen. Anthony Perry, Daniel Horvath, and Marco Zamora brought home more than $500 in prizes and an invitation to compete at Pinnacle, perhaps the most competitive collegiate hackathon worldwide. The team had been encouraged to participate in the event by their fellow �鶹��Ƶ participants. Although only freshmen, the teammates had an existing relationship, as they had all been on a robotics team in high school.

The team’s project, Dangerous Audio Detection (DAD), is an Alarm System Network that uses machine learning algorithms to accurately identify the sound of gunshots and alerts community members.

“The idea for our project, DAD, stemmed from our desire to answer [�鶹��Ƶ President] Gregory Washington’s call to solve the grand challenges in our world,” the team said.

“We are especially excited about participating in Pinnacle, often referred to as the Olympics of collegiate-level hackathons, as we have received a prestigious invitation. This experience has solidified our commitment to continuous learning and participation in hackathons as a means to push our boundaries and contribute to our community’s grand challenges,” the team said.

Bitcamp at the University of Maryland

The BitTales team. Photo provided

An undergraduate and a graduate team garnered acclaim at the University of Maryland’s Bitcamp hackathon, the largest collegiate hackathon on the east coast. The event had five primary tracks, varying from machine learning to quantum computing, and included more than 1,000 students, packed into the Xfinity Center on the College Park campus.

The upperclassmen team from HooHacks—with the addition of �鶹��Ƶ alum Katherine Horvath, a information technology graduate and freshman Daniel’s sister—was one of two teams to win awards in two different challenges, including taking first in the Bloomberg Industry Group challenge. The Bloomberg project involved using any public/government data to showcase a specific application highlighting data insights and intelligence. The team’s solution elicited praise from Bloomberg representatives, with the sponsors noting how impressed they were with the product.

A team of international graduate students studying computer science also won two tracks with their project BitTales, a natural language processing-based web application that turns meaningful conversations into personalized bedtime stories. Master’s students Janit Bidhan and Aabha Bothera and doctoral candidate Saurabh Srivastava won both the Best Use of CockroachDB Serverless and the Best Machine Learning Hack awards at the event, bringing home more than $400 in prize money.

DragonHacks 2023 at Drexel University.

Perfect Application for Plant Assistance (PAPA) team. Photo provided

Two members of the victorious HooHacks 2023 freshmen team, Daniel Horvath and Anthony Perry, joined a member of the successful upperclassmen team from the same event, Jhonn Dalton Cardozo, to participate in DragonHacks 2023 at Drexel University. The hybrid team won Best Environmental Hack for their project Perfect Application for Plant Assistance (PAPA). The project “aimed to help solve food insecurities through encouraging sustainable botany practices,” said Horvath and Perry. �鶹��Ƶ’s Patriot Pantry inspired the team to use competition as a means of incentivizing efforts to end food insecurity, the team wrote in the project description.

“Our decision to pursue the best environmental hack track at Dragon Hacks stemmed from a desire to explore new territories, engage in a hardware–software integration project, and the enticing prospect of winning some TVs,” Cardozo recalled. “But beyond the prizes, our team was fueled by a genuine commitment to make a difference and create a solution that would contribute to the well-being of the environment.”

Reflections on Three Hackathons

Jhonn Dalton Cardozo gleaned lessons from his experience in each of these hackathons.

“During the UVA hackathon, I discovered that teamwork is the backbone of any successful project,” he noted.

“At Bitcamp, I realized that commitment and dedication to a project can take you far,” he added.

“At Dragon Hacks, the importance of team management became even more apparent,” he said. “Having a talented team is fantastic, but knowing how to leverage their strengths and expertise is the real key to success. Recognizing the value of different perspectives, interests, and potential within each team member was a crucial aspect of creating our final project. While this might sound like common knowledge, I never fully appreciated the challenge and gratification of managing a team while doing the actual work. I am truly grateful for the exceptional group of individuals in my team and deeply appreciate their efforts in bringing our collective vision to life.”

Topics

computer science

information sciences and technology

mechanical engineering

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

This graduating engineer is an inventor at heart

Colleen Rich — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 16:01:45 +0000

This graduating engineer is an inventor at heart Colleen Rich Mon, 12/05/2022 - 11:01

Senior Sai Srivatsav Gutala has been busy during his time at �鶹��Ƶ, and he has a lot of big ideas.

Inventor Sai Srivatsav Gutala is graduating with a BS in electrical engineering. Photo by Cristian Torres/Strategic Communications

In 2019, as a sophomore, the electrical engineering major started a student club called the Inventors and Innovations Team (IIT) with one of his classmates, computer engineering major Nicholas Paschke.

“We wanted to give students an opportunity to build whatever it is that tickles their mind,” he said of the club that still meets in the makerspace at the �鶹��Ƶ Innovation Exchange (MIX) in Horizon Hall on the Fairfax Campus. “As long as it's reasonable and innovative, we agreed to it and tried to create it. Since IIT started, our vision has been to have multiple teams working on building different projects at the same time.”

Current IIT projects include a fire-detecting drone that could help with wildfires and a sensing cane for the visually impaired. Some ideas will fail, but this doesn’t bother Gutala, who graduates with a bachelor of science this month. It is the ideas themselves and the execution that interest him.

As he approached his senior year, Gutala wanted to take things to the next level and founded the hardware hackathon, HackOverflow.

“Its purpose was all about giving students the hands-on opportunity to create something grand,” said Gutala, who recently served as the chair of HackOverflow’s executive committee and is now an advisor.

They partnered with an existing hackathon at �鶹��Ƶ, Patriot Hacks, and �鶹��Ƶ’s Institute of Digital Innovation's executive director Kammy Sanghera. The event took place in March 2022 at the MIX.

While many hackathons focus on coding, HackOverflow had students using the MIX’s 3D printer, soldering station, and other equipment to create prototypes of their ideas. Gutala said it is one of only a handful of hardware hackathons in the country.

“Throughout the process, Sai ensured that participants of HackOverflow had the resources and mentors to design prototypes,” said Sanghera. “From building his executive team to seeking sponsorships for the event, Sai was professional and diligent. Through initiatives like IIT and HackOverflow, Sai generated opportunities for his peers to change the world positively.”

Gutala has also started a company called Alphawave and has been one of the student entrepreneurs in the MIX’s incubator space. With Alphawave, Gutala is developing appearance-customizable apparel. He began with footwear—and he already has a prototype—but Gutala sees this as the beginning of using technology to customize personal items for self-expression.

Through the incubator program, Gutala was able to have his own space within the MIX and use of the program’s professional development resources, such as the mini Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program (ICAP) program offered to �鶹��Ƶ student entrepreneurs. Gutala said he found the mini “the most helpful thing ever.”

“ICAP focuses on finding your ideal customer that will be loyal to your company,” said Gutala. “If a business can understand their customer, everything else is easy.”

Topics

Volgenau School of Engineering

Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA)

Electrical Engineering

2022 Annual Hackathon

Wasiq Muhammad Muhammad Ali — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 19:29:39 +0000

2022 Annual Hackathon Wasiq Muhammad… Fri, 10/07/2022 - 15:29

On October 1, Honors College Connects (HCC) held its second annual Hackathon. The Hackathon is an opportunity for students to come up with creative solutions to issues that various local nonprofit organizations face. This year’s participating nonprofits included:

Annandale Christian Community for Action, a church-affiliated voluntary organization assisting low-income families in the Annandale/Bailey’s Crossroads area;
Shelter House, a domestic violence shelter;
League of Women Voters Fairfax, a nonpartisan voter participation organization;
NV Rides, a network of volunteers providing personal transportation to seniors;

Sustainable �鶹��Ƶ President’s Park Greenhouse, an organization that provides fresh produce to the �鶹��Ƶ community;
Latino Economic Development Center, an organization that provides financial education to Latino & other underserved communities.

The students also enjoyed a catered lunch together and took group photos.

First-time Honors student participant Farhan Babar worked with Sustainable �鶹��Ƶ, creating marketing material to promote their free produce options. He recounts one challenge his team encountered: “We tried doing so many things all at once that we ended up becoming separated. We weren’t even able to finish most of the things we were trying to do individually.” Despite the challenges of working in a large, ambitious team, Babar says that he enjoyed getting to know other Honors College students that day.

Sebastian Rodionov, another newcomer to the Hackathon, worked with NV Rides to create an advertisement campaign persuading recent retirees to become volunteer drivers for local seniors. He shares that for his team, “generally speaking, we did not run into any challenges at the Hackathon. I provided ideas and bounced them to other members for feedback. Our team also had a professional graphic designer who created a gorgeous Facebook post/sample flyer from scratch.” For Rodionov, “the best part of the Hackathon was seeing the end products of all the other groups and reflecting on all we accomplished that day.”

Topics

Honors College Connects

Honors College

Nonprofits

TraCCC and Amazon team up for policy hackathon to stop counterfeiters

Colleen Rich — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 16:18:35 +0000

TraCCC and Amazon team up for policy hackathon to stop counterfeiters Colleen Rich Fri, 08/05/2022 - 12:18

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Louise I. Shelley

�鶹��Ƶ’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) and Amazon have joined forces to help combat counterfeiting and its criminal supply chain networks.

The method? Co-hosting the 2022 Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon, a first-of-its-kind event, administered by Blue Clarity, that will challenge teams from U.S. academic institutions, companies and other affiliations to develop innovative ideas to combat these global challenges.

Registration opened August 5 ahead of an August 27 virtual kickoff event. An in-person final judging will be on November 5, when teams will compete for more than $20,000 in prizes. Go to expeditionhacks.com/counterfeiting for details and to register.

“Our goal is to bring together U.S. policy makers, domain experts, and academic institutions to raise awareness of the threats and generate powerful new ideas to stop this criminal activity,” said TraCCC Director Louise Shelley, a University Professor in the Schar School. “We are excited to have Amazon as a partner in this initial event and we appreciate their leadership in fostering a culture of open cooperation and innovation. The results from this hackathon will also be used to inform our ongoing research on counterfeit and other criminal supply chain networks.”

As ideas are developed, teams will be able to engage real-time with a diverse group of mentors from across the public and private sectors, including Edward Huang, a member of TraCCC and an associate professor in �鶹��Ƶ's College of Engineering and Computing.

“�鶹��Ƶ is taking on these global challenges that we must confront as humanity,” �鶹��Ƶ alum Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of global innovation policy and communications, said in April at the groundbreaking for the Fuse building at �鶹��Ƶ Square in Arlington.

“The fact is, �鶹��Ƶ is not just a pipeline for tech talent,” Shelley said. “We have a unique perspective that Amazon sought out, which is to place tech in context to inform policy. This makes �鶹��Ƶ different from other tech programs, and is what brought Amazon to us in the first place.”

The hackathon continues and expands �鶹��Ƶ’s partnership with Amazon.

The Fuse building is part of a large-scale expansion at �鶹��Ƶ Square. Scheduled to open in 2025, it will be a 345,000-square-foot facility that will serve as a technological hub in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, connecting students, faculty, industry, and government.

The campus, which is adjacent to Amazon’s new headquarters, is part of �鶹��Ƶ’s commitment to expanding its programs in computer science, computer engineering, information technology and other closely related fields to rapidly increase the number of highly skilled graduates for Amazon and other regional employers.

�鶹��Ƶ also just completed a collaboration with Amazon and the Maryland Chamber Foundation in a program that provided current and potential computer science teachers in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. with an opportunity to shadow Amazon experts and take a companion three-credit, graduate-level class at �鶹��Ƶ. That program is now funded by Google.

“�鶹��Ƶ’s partnership with Amazon to curate real-world experiential learning initiatives like the TraCCC hackathon positions �鶹��Ƶ students as some of the best-trained, work-ready talent pipelines in the nation,” said Liza Wilson Durant, �鶹��Ƶ’s associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement. “This event not only supports our students’ professional development, but will lead to impactful solutions to a challenging real-world threat.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5% (roughly $464 billion) a year in world trade. Counterfeiters deprive brand owners of the value of their intellectual property and compete unfairly with honest entrepreneurs. The supply chains of counterfeiters may also intersect with transnational networks in a wide range of illicit behavior, including illegal trade in narcotics, arms, people, and wildlife.

“Amazon is known for its customer obsession, and a critical part of that is earning and maintaining our customers’ trust,” said Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of brand protection at Amazon. “While we are proud of the progress we have made, we will not stop until we drive counterfeits to zero in our store, and we will continue to invest and innovate until we get there.”

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