We are proud to announce the winners of our EastBanc Technologies challenges from HackTJ 2022, an annual hackathon organized by the students of Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va. This year’s event brought together 400+ passionate students eager to develop creative technology solutions to real-world problems.
2022 marked our third year sponsoring HackTJ, and as this year’s Gold sponsor, we designed three challenges for participating teams to “hack” during the 24-hour event for a chance to win a Razer BlackWidow V3 Mechanical Keyboard or a Raspberry Pi 400.
Entries were reviewed by our EastBanc Technologies judges, CTO Victor Shilo and machine learning engineer Denys Fedorchuk, who together bring more than 20 years of experience building custom software solutions that solve complex business and technology issues for customers. Entries were evaluated for their technical soundness, launch readiness and overall creativity. “We were blown away by the thoughtfulness and level of detail in all of the entries submitted for our challenges,” says Denys Fedorchuk. “We struggled to select only three winners and applaud all of the teams for their outstanding builds, and, in many cases, on-the-spot learning during HackTJ. Our team is truly inspired by the fresh perspective and great ideas presented.”
This year’s EastBanc Technologies challenges and winners include:
Challenge No. 1: Inspired by our innovative client, The Washington Post, we asked teams to develop a hack that can help battle misinformation.
Winning “hack:” The News Comparator is a news comparison tool that identifies similarities and differences in published content to help consumers evaluate the information they consume as well as their sources. Read more here: https://devpost.com/software/redstone-comparator-news-compare.
Challenge No. 2: Inspired by our work with the American Red Cross and the organization’s efforts in responding to global crises, we asked teams to create a hack that will provide some type of humanitarian aid.
Winning “hack:’’ The Disease Detector is a web-based application that allows for preliminary diagnosis of a disease based on a user’s symptoms and image recognition. This app is especially useful in remote environments, where in-person medical aid is not always accessible. Read more here: https://devpost.com/software/remote-disease-detector.
Challenge No. 3: TerraIQ, an EastBanc Technologies-owned startup, is a cloud-based business intelligence platform that uses real-time mobile tracking to power vehicle and asset management solutions. TerraIQ could be a base for the next Uber or delivery tracker. For this challenge, we asked participants to create a hack that could assist the world with the current supply chain issues.
Winning “hack:” There are more crashes in cars than airplanes, yet we can’t gather extensive data from car crashes. The Crash Box Crash Detection System (CDS) acts as a black box but for cars. It gets accurate data using multiple sensors. Read more here: https://devpost.com/software/brown-box-crash-detection-system-cds#updates.
Congratulations to all of the teams that participated at HackTJ 2022! We look forward to the many innovations that you contribute to our world in the years to come.