Mercer Times

Participants recently gathered at The College of New Jersey for Hackathon 2024, an event hosted by HackTCNJ. Over 140 students from local high schools and colleges came together to work on software or hardware projects within a 24-hour timeframe. The hackathon took place at the Brower Student Center and included activities such as team building, project development, technical workshops, and provided free food.

The event aimed to encourage participants to bring tech-based ideas to life while competing for prizes like gaming monitors and gift cards. Yarden Mach, a political science major from the class of '23, received the "Best Social Impact" award for his project titled Save Your Muni. This initiative seeks to make sustainability data more accessible for municipalities in New Jersey. Mach explained that the project provides insights into electricity usage by sector and greenhouse gas emission sources among other metrics. He used Python programming language for this endeavor.

"When I started the project, I thought I had no chance of completing it," said Mach. "But the more I wrote, the more confident I became."

Another team comprising computer science major Joe Petrecca '25 and physics majors Connor McNeil '24 and Skyler Keyek '26 won the "Best Creative Hack" award with their app SnapShot. This micro-learning platform is designed to introduce students to lecture material before classes begin by allowing educators to upload small portions of their lectures.

Major League Hacking sponsored this hackathon as part of its efforts to inspire innovation and teach computer science skills through weekend-long invention competitions.