5/14/2015 By Laura Schmitt, CS @ ILLINOIS
Written by By Laura Schmitt, CS @ ILLINOIS
Major League Hacking (MLH), a national organization that sanctions and promotes collegiate hacks, presented Illini Hackers with its first-place award for the fall 2014 North American season on May 5, 2015, at the Siebel Center. The Illini Hacker team earned the award by participating in the most MLH-sanctioned events and outperforming other college teams in the fun, weekend-long hacking challenges.
MLH CEO Mike Swift presented the traveling Hacker Cup and some prizes to CS @ ILLINOIS students who have helped cultivate an enthusiastic hacker culture on campus. Among the students were senior Matthew Dierker, who co-founded HackIllinois, which in two short years has become one of the country’s most anticipated collegiate hackathons; senior Nathan Handler and sophomore Nick Kortendick, who led the 2015 HackIllinois, which drew more than 900 students to campus in late February; outgoing Women in Computer Science (WCS) president Emily Tran, who was operations director at HackIllinois 2014; and new Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) chair Sujay Khandekar, who was sponsorship director at HackIllinois 2015.
The hacking culture at Illinois really blossomed in 2014 when students organized and held the first HackIllinois, a 36-hour team competition showcasing students’ programming and creative skills. The 2014 event drew more than 700 students from 21 Midwest universities.
“When HackIllinois occurred this past winter, almost 750 IL students applied to participate, which was tremendous,” said Kortendick, noting that more than 900 students from 70 schools participated. “It’s not always about winning, it’s about building and it’s really cool to see Illinois at the center of this movement.”
In addition to presenting the award, Swift announced that MLH was donating new computers, monitors, and Pebble and Jawbone wearable computers to ACM and WCS.
“The fact that you guys won the fall season is amazing, and it’s a huge testament to how powerful the [hacking] community is here,” said Swift. “Most of you probably didn’t know each other when you started going to hackathons, but you know about each other now. Every one of you should be extremely proud of yourselves, the community you have here, and of the leaders who stepped up to shape the community.”