RPS Students Organize 24-Hour MEGA Hackathon Event

In early April 2022, the MEGA Hackathon League hosted a hybrid hackathon catered to the United Nations' seventeen sustainable development goals. Founded by RPS students Agni Rajinikanth '23 and Yuxuan Tian '23, the MEGA Hackathon League is a coalition of high-school students from New Jersey and around the globe.

By infusing computer science competitions with these goals, the goal of the MEGA Hack League’s annual Hackathon is to raise awareness for global welfare while instilling passion in computer science students. Lasting twenty-four hours, MEGAHack2022 took place from Friday, April 2 to Sunday, April 4 in a hybrid format, with the theme “AI for Good.” Participants joined the event online through the Zoom platform and participated in person in New Jersey and Massachusetts. There were over 200+ participants from various parts of the world and over 50 projects submitted. Prizes included gift cards, Arduino kits, software licenses, internships, and more for the winners.

The event started with Opening Ceremonies and workshops that prepared participants for the upcoming competition. The competition began at 2 p.m. on Saturday and ended on 2 p.m. on Sunday. The themes of the projects included building solutions to help address one or more of the United Nation’s Seventeen Goals of Sustainability and/or homelessness.

Participants were treated to a Saturday night dinner, midnight pizza and brunch on Sunday morning. There were also snacks and drinks throughout the event. During breaks, the students played basketball, sang karaoke, and got to know each other better.

There were two winning projects that involved Rutgers Preparatory School students:

• Avi Gupta ’24, who was part of the "AInnovations" project team that resulted in a first-place tie for the Top High School projects. This project addressed the problem of "Over-Notating" (aka too many notes), which has a negative impact on student learning, including: forgetting details of lessons, difficulty studying because of too many notes, a lack of engagement in classes, and regurgitation of concepts instead of comprehension. It also ties into the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis by offering a means to help teachers make their lessons more efficient and lessons and provide translations. https://devpost.com/software/ainnotations-rfzj7a
   
• Ishan Parikh ’25, Promit Mukhopadhyay ’25, Adit Trivedi ’25, and Michael Chang ’25, who won the Business Innovator Award for the "GO Stem" project. "GO Stem" is a virtual game in which the players compete to finish tasks that aim to help build sustainability for the world. The goal of the game is to show people how they can get involved and make a change. https://devpost.com/software/mega-hack-go-stem

Other Rutgers Prep students who served as Organizers for the MEGA Hackathon included: Max Xiong '24, Jason Xu '25, Daniel Achacon '24, Chul Lee '24, Cheng Hua '24 and Larry Liu '24. Additionally. Ishan Parikh '25, Promit Mukhopadhyay '25, Adit Trivedi '25, and Cheng Hua '25 also played supporting roles in helping to make this event become a reality. Rutgers Preparatory in-person and virtual participants included Ishan Parikh ’25, Promit Mukhopadhyay, Adit Trivedi, Michael Chang '25, Avi Gupta ’24, Raina Desai '23, Miriam Portnoy '24, Sunay Davda '24, Arnav Upadhyay '24, Anay Upadhyah '24, Palash Shah '24, Laasya Kanumuri '24, and Sanjog Dandona '24.

We are so incredibly proud of everyone who participated and helped make this event a huge success. A special thanks to Ms. Alicia Conroy who oversaw the planning, preparation, and execution of the event, Mrs. Nishita Desai for chaperoning, and Dr. Kevin Merges for his support of the event and serving as a judge for the competition.