YHack brings hundreds of hackers to campus for 24 hours of innovation
Yale’s annual hackathon draws students from across the country to create projects targeting specialized issues.
YHack, Yale’s annual student-organized hackathon, drew over 250 students from colleges across the country to Tsai CITY this weekend.
From 11 a.m. Saturday to 11 a.m. Sunday, attendees created hacks, or computer science solutions, for a range of problems in a project-style software engineering competition.
These hacks required attendees to apply programming languages, machine learning and other computer science tools to projects solving issues on one of four tracks — sustainability, health care, education, and entertainment and media.
“Organizing YHack is a months-long process. … It’s like organizing a startup or taking care of a baby because you’re creating such a large event from scratch,” said Brandon Yee ’25, a co-director of YHack 2024. “When it finally happens, it’s a really exciting time, and the event itself is definitely super chaotic.”
Throughout the hackathon, student volunteers and representatives from several sponsors also hosted informational talks and interactive workshops to supplement the projects for attendees.
Workshops included “Navigating Tech Interviews” by an Amazon engineering manager, a hands-on “An Intro to GitHub” session led by Major League Hacking and an introductory course on large language models.
Harvard professor David J. Malan also had his team of students host a CS50 Workshop on OpenAI Chat Completion application programming interface, or API, which taught attendees how to utilize AI-driven chat functionalities. Malan’s workshop also explored how CS50’s AI teaching assistance leverages the Chat Completion API in real-world applications.
“I’m learning a lot about web development and coding, and it gives me the opportunity to work on projects with other people,” said Samuel Orellana Mateo, a sophomore at Duke University. “I’m learning from [others], but also I’m developing my own skills, which is really fun.”
Orellana Mateo told the News that his team was working on a project that would take research papers in a latex format and develop them into slides using AI, shortening the time needed to prepare slides for classes or a presentation.
Yee noted that it is “currently peak hackathon season,” when most major universities host their own hackathons.
Less than a month ago, Yee attended HackMIT, one of the largest hackathons in the world. This year, YHack coincided with DivHacks, Columbia University’s annual hackathon, which led to a lower attendance. YHack is also followed by HackHarvard, scheduled for Oct. 11-13.
“Obviously, at the moment, we’re not as much of a fixture on the hacking circuit as we’d like,” Yee told the News. “We’re not an engineering school like MIT, so we might not be able to have all the resources that MIT has for their hackathons, but we’re trying to create a similar experience of a really large and really fun hackathon for students from all around the world.”
Yale School of Engineering and Applied Sciences co-sponsored the hackathon. Yee expressed gratitude to the University for supporting YHack this year. Some of the hackathon’s sponsors this year also included Palantir Technologies, Fetch AI and Wolfram.
According to Yee, YHack allows sponsors to come to the event and recruit students for internships or jobs.
“This benefits us and the companies because by sponsoring such a large-scale event, they are provided access to a highly-concentrated pool of students who really enjoy computer science,” Yee said.
Many participants noted the opportunity for networking as one of the highlights of YHack.
Rohan Parikh, a sophomore at Northeastern University, said that many students have a hard time accessing companies such as those present at the hackathon.
“I enjoyed how YHack fosters so many connections between undergraduates and tech companies,” Parikh said.
Over the course of 24 hours, participants also took part in recreational events, from performances by Yale student groups to snack breaks, a spaghetti tower challenge, a slideshow karaoke and a spicy ramen eating contest.
At the end of the event, a panel of preselected judges composed of leaders and professionals from companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Meta, AWS and Deloitte, judged over 40 projects for their creativity, practicality and technical complexity.
At the closing ceremony on Sunday, one overall prize was awarded, as well as several “track” prizes for the best projects solving issues in the areas of sustainability, health care, entertainment & media and education.
YHack was founded in 2013.