In 24 hours, a singular idea can become an entire coded and completed program.
At HackBU, an annual hackathon event held at Binghamton University, more than 350 students from across the Northeast come together to collaborate on various projects, discover new forms of technology, network with recruiters and compete for prizes.
Sometimes, the programs they create live on, even after the 24-hour event is finished. Last year, Colin Fiutak, a junior majoring in computer science, Kerry O’Neill, a sophomore majoring in computer science and Gabriel Steinberg, a junior majoring in computer science, won the awards for “Best Overall Hack” and “Best Newbie Hack” for their team’s project, a program designed to automatically detect and label fake news in an article.
According to Fiutak, their project specifically targets false news articles such as those seen in the 2016 presidential election.
“The program takes the URL for a given news article and feeds features such as text complexity and the age of the website to a machine learning algorithm to determine the article’s legitimacy,” Fiutak said. “The goal of the program is to specifically target the weaponized political disinformation seen during the 2016 elections, where individuals from countries such as Russia and Macedonia spread fake news at an unprecedented rate.”
Following the event, all four members of the team were invited to do research with Kenneth Chiu, an associate professor of computer science at BU, to continue working on their project.
“Our program was effective at detecting fake news from the 2016 elections, but we think that fake news during the 2020 elections will be more polished and harder to detect,” Fiutak said. “We’ve been waiting for the start of the primary season to see what we’ll be up against for the next few years.”
Another project created last year, Kibbutz, also won awards. Created by three BU students, the project aimed to code a local crowdfunding service, and received the “Best Humanitarian & Open Source Hack” and “Best Fintech Hack” awards.
Adam Nieto, one of the students on the team and a senior majoring in computer science, said the project was designed to create a community-centric service.
“We are a local crowdfunding ‘startup’ in order for communities to grow together, while also allowing other people to be exposed to a local community’s projects and interests as well,” Nieto said.
In addition to incubating complex coding projects, HackBU also caters to new programmers. According to Melanie Chen, co-director of this year’s HackBU and a senior double-majoring in computer science and music, the main aim of the hackathon is to promote connections and help students learn new technologies.
“The goals of the event are to bring students together to make new friends and learn new technologies, introduce students to the HackBU club and introduce students to programming if they haven’t learned it before,” Chen said. “The event can also help students improve their résumé with a new project and network with sponsoring employers.”
Although Steinberg is a more experienced coder, he said HackBU still helped him meet new people and learn new information about programming.
“I ended up making some new friends and learning a lot about programming and machine learning,” Steinberg said.
The event also draws students from across the region. This year, students from Cornell University, Stony Brook University, Rochester Institute of Technology and other universities are expected to attend and compete for prize categories including “Best Civic Engagement Hack,” “Most Viable Business,” “Best Security Hack,” “Most Technical Hack,” “Best Newbie Hack,” “Best Design” and “Funniest Hack.”
HackBU will take place from Feb. 9 to 10 in the Innovative Technologies Complex.