18 days ago
Finalists: Please Confirm Your Presentation
Hi finalists,
Congratulations again! Please reply to me at [email protected] or DM me on GroupMe to confirm that your team will present today.
Presentations start at 4:30 PM in Lopata 101. Each team will have 4 minutes for a demo and 4 minutes for Q&A. Please arrive a little early so we can get everyone ready.
See you soon!
Best,
Eric
18 days ago
Finalists Announced — Photon Track Prize Selected Separately
Hi everyone,
Please come to Lopata 101 at 4:30 PM, even if your team is not on the finalist list! The Photon Track Prize is being selected separately, so teams that are not among the 10 overall finalists may still win that prize.
Congratulations to our 10 overall finalist teams:
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Agronaut
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Fl-AI Me to the Moon
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Ground Control
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Juno
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Last Rocket to the Moon
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Moonflip
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Orbit
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Same Moon (Moon Courier)
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SkyCompanion
-
Vibread
Finalist presentations begin today at 4:30 PM in Lopata 101. Each team will have 4 minutes for a demo, followed by 4 minutes of Q&A…
18 days ago
Submissions are closed — 151 participants, 30 projects. You did it!
Submissions are closed, and the build window is officially over. You did it! 🎉
Over the past 48 hours, 151 participants came together and submitted 30 projects. You took ideas from Friday evening’s prompt to working projects on Devpost by noon today. That’s incredible, and our judges are already impressed by what they’re seeing.
Here’s what’s next:
- 3:30 PM — Finalists announced
- 4:30 PM — Finalist presentations, Lopata 101
- 6:30 PM — Winners announced and closing ceremony, Lopata 101
Come watch the presentations, even if you aren’t a finalist! This is your chance to see what everyone built, cheer on…
18 days ago
35 minutes left — hit submit now
Submissions close at 12:00 PM. That's 35 minutes.
Submit now with whatever you have. You can keep editing your submission right up until noon — what you cannot do is submit after it. Sooner than later.
An unfinished submission still counts. A late one doesn't.
On the Photon track? Start your title with [Photon].
Questions?
If you have any questions about the hackathon, please post on the discussion forum.
18 days ago
Submissions close today at 12:00 PM
Final stretch. Devpost submissions close today at 12:00 PM Central. Devpost closes the form automatically at noon — there is no grace period.
The single best thing you can do right now is submit early. Put in whatever you have, then keep editing; you can update your submission right up until the deadline. A rough submission at 11:00 beats a perfect one at 12:01.
On the Photon track? Start your submission title with [Photon] — for example, [Photon] Kitchen Table. That is how we find you when judging, so a project without it may not get reviewed for…
19 days ago
Correction: the Pitch Challenge starts at 8:00, not 8:30
Quick fix to the last email. The Impromptu AI Pitch Challenge starts at 8:00 PM, not 8:30. Same place: Lopata gallery.
Swap prompts with another team, 10 minutes to turn their prompt into an idea and up to 5 slides, then a 3-minute pitch. Categories: Most Convincing, Most Creative, Best Use of AI, Best Prompt.
No sign-up, nothing to prepare. 8:00 PM, Lopata gallery.
Sorry for the double message — we did not want anyone showing up half an hour late.
19 days ago
Tonight at 8:00: Impromptu AI Pitch Challenge, Lopata gallery
Put the laptop down for a bit. Tonight we are running the Impromptu AI Pitch Challenge — and the whole point is that you cannot prepare for it.
8:00 PM · Lopata gallery
Here is how it works: you swap prompts with another team. You get 10 minutes to turn their prompt into an idea and up to 5 slides. Then you deliver a 3-minute pitch.
Serious, creative, absurd, experimental — anything goes. Use AI for all of it: brainstorming, writing, visuals, slide design.
Categories: Most Convincing, Most Creative, Best Use of AI, and Best…
19 days ago
Photon office hours today at 5:00 PM — bring your questions
Building on the Photon bonus track? Photon is hosting an online Q&A this afternoon to answer questions about the track.
Today, Saturday September 26 · 5:00 – 5:45 PM Central (the invite shows 3:00 PM Pacific — same session)
Join: https://meet.google.com/efm-khmn-vid
Dial in by phone: (US) +1 415-737-9307, PIN 232 604 871#
Other numbers: https://tel.meet/efm-khmn-vid?pin=3047425575096
Bring whatever you're stuck on — Spectrum setup, the iMessage integration, or what they're actually looking for in judging. You don't need to have started building to join.
20 days ago
Bonus track from Photon: build agents that live in iMessage — $1,000 in prizes
A late addition to the weekend, and it comes with its own prize pool.
Photon is opening a bonus track: Agents in iMessage. It runs alongside the main prompt — same project, two shots at winning. Keep building for the prompt as planned; if what you build also integrates Spectrum, that same submission is eligible for Photon’s prizes on top. One project can win both.
It is for teams who think AI is not a utility tool but something that lives with us — present in your conversations, attuned to context, trusted to act with taste. Build agents that participate,…
20 days ago
Tonight: check-in at 4:30, opening ceremony at 5:00
It’s here. After weeks of planning, the HackWashU Fall AI Build Challenge starts tonight — and we genuinely cannot wait to see what you build.
4:30 PM — Check-in opens. Lopata gallery.
Come grab your t-shirt and swag, get a name tag, and find your people. Take photos with your friends — we’ve got fun activities lined up! We are also doing a group photo before the ceremony, so get there early enough to be in it.
5:00 PM — Opening ceremony. Lopata 101.
Schedule, judges, our partners — and then the prompt drops and the build window opens. That…
21 days ago
Saturday 2:30 PM: AI for Science, with Henric Krawczynski
One more on the Saturday board, and it is the one that zooms out.
Henric Krawczynski — Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor of Physics and Chair of the Physics Department at WashU — on what AI is actually doing inside research, and where computer science and physics meet.
Saturday, September 26 · 2:30 PM · Lopata 101
- Already in the lab. Where machine learning does real work in physics today, not in a press release.
- Where CS meets physics. Huge datasets, noisy signals, and simulations no person can hand-check.
- How to get into it. What an undergrad…
22 days ago
Saturday 1 PM: train your first model — an intro to ML with PyTorch
Second workshop of the weekend, and this one starts from zero.
The WashU AI Club is running From Features to Flowers: An Introduction to ML and AI with PyTorch. You will train a real model, not watch someone else train one.
Saturday, September 26 · 1:00 PM · Lopata 101
- Train a model from scratch. Four measurements in, a flower species out — built and trained live in PyTorch.
- See why it works. What supervised learning is actually doing, and the math underneath it.
- Take it anywhere. The same approach runs spam filters and medical diagnostics. The flowers are…
24 days ago
Startup coffee chat/workshop with Eliam Medina, Monday September 28
The hackathon ends Sunday, but one more thing is happening the next day.
HackWashU, Telora, and GDG are hosting a startup workshop and live Q&A with Eliam Medina — co-founder of Willing, acquired by MetLife, and now founder of Telora, a fellowship that helps college students start startups.
If you built something this weekend and you're wondering what happens after the demo, this is the session for it. Eliam will cover how to find and validate an idea worth pursuing, how to land your first customers, how to pick the right cofounder, and the mistakes that quietly kill early startups.…
25 days ago
Thursday 7 PM: agentic coding workshop — and free Claude Edu for WashU students
Two things before the build window opens Friday.
1. A hands-on workshop the night before.
The WashU AI Club is running From Idea to Prototype: Agentic Coding with Claude — not “how to prompt,” but how to give Claude enough context to work inside a real project and wire it up to tools that can actually run things for you.
Thursday, September 24 · 7:00–8:00 PM · Skandalaris Center, Mallinckrodt 128
- Claude as a coding partner — context, planning, and what to review
- Building tools that take action: run commands, call APIs, touch your files
- Automating the repetitive work that…
26 days ago
Saturday 10 AM: WWT on AI code in the real world — plus resume time with their recruiter
Step away from your build Saturday morning. World Wide Technology is joining us to talk about what happens to AI-generated code once it leaves a hackathon repo and lands in a real enterprise codebase — and what that means for the job you’re about to apply for.
Saturday, September 26 · 10:00–11:30 AM · Lopata Hall 101
Talk 1 — AI code gen is amazing. So why hasn’t it changed the enterprise?
Models lose the thread in legacy code, review becomes the bottleneck, agents make conflicting changes, and cost compounds. Closes on a .NET migration scoped at 22 weeks and…