Hosted by Case Western Reserve University, HackCWRU 2025 was a chance for many students, from both colleges and high schools, to get together and build projects over a three-day weekend in late January.
Ishika Kanakath, a fourth-year computer engineering student and president of HackCWRU, had organized the event. “Many projects were designed to make an impact on the community,” she said. “It meant a lot to me that a lot of people showed up and I had a great team that helped plan this event with me since the summer.”
Dr. Alexis Block, her former professor and the assistant professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, was a guest speaker at the event. “My goal was to inspire Hackathon participants to embrace challenges, channel their personal experiences as motivation, and support one another in their journeys,” Block said. “Hackathons are incredible opportunities for creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration. I love seeing students learn new things and create solutions to real problems they identify that can make a real impact.”
Kanakath and her team raised more than $10,000 in prizes and scholarships for the hackathon winners. When asked what receiving the scholarship meant to them, first-year computer science student Matthew Stall and first-year computer science and computer engineering student Abra Giddings, who worked together on the third-place project “blendev,” shared their appreciation for the hackathon’s recognition of their project’s social impact.
“Receiving the scholarship was incredibly meaningful since it recognizes projects that are focused on the public good and having a positive social impact,” Stall said. Describing the project, he said it “was focused on providing useful developer features which are currently missing from the open source Python library for Blender.”
Giddings shared her gratitude in being able to use her theoretical knowledge on this project.
“My favorite part of the hackathon experience was completing a tangible project using the concepts we’ve learned in our classes. Oftentimes assignments for programming classes are highly theoretical, so it is really exciting to make something real for a change. Completing a project like ours from start to finish is very satisfying and requires so many different skills,” she said.
When asked of their future plans, both students shared their intentions to seek technical careers after their time at CWRU. Giddings expressed a keen interest in low-level programming, though she is seeking to explore a wide scope of subjects. Stall voiced his inclination to pursue either cybersecurity or quantum computing.
“I am also incredibly grateful that the scholarship will make it easier for me to afford to keep studying at [CWRU],” Stall added.
Such hackathons are geared toward supporting students and providing them with the opportunity to transfer their technical knowledge toward tangible, socially impactful projects. For Kanakath, organizing the hackathon also gave her the chance to honor the values of her late mother, Radha Vinod, a former technology leader at Experian.
“It was nice to honor my mother and look at projects that reflected her values of leadership, creativity, and compassion,” she said. “My mom was always supportive of undergrads advancing their tech careers and I am glad we could honor her this way.”