CruzHacks 2024 Winners
This article written by CruzHacks team leaders Lia Fung and Glomarie Ramos, and Doug Erickson
CruzHacks is the annual hackathon run by undergraduate students from UC Santa Cruz. Each year, we welcome hundreds of college and high school students interested in developing technology for social good. We strive to empower the next generation of creators by providing the tools, environment, and motivation to plausibly solve real-world problems. Our initiative is to expand diversity in tech by sparking the drive to innovate within all our participants.
CruzHacks 2024's main prize tracks revolved around innovation for social good, with themes including social justice, sustainability, education, and healthcare. The secondary prize categories challenged hackers to push beyond their limits, with rewards for first-time hackers, those who utilized AI, projects with amazing UI/UX, and projects that benefited the UCSC college community.
CruzHacks 2024 hackers got to hear from inspirational speakers including:
Lila Tretikov, Deputy Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft
Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist of Canva
David Hallock, Director of Engineering at Rapid Robotics.
Hackers also had the opportunity to attend a mix of technical and non-technical workshops, as well as fun activities such as cup stacking, throughout the event.
CruzHacks 2024's primary audience was undergraduate students of any major enrolled at a university. However, we did accept younger students, as long as they were enrolled in a secondary school or higher. We also accepted Masters and Ph.D. level students, as well as students from alternative schools such as bootcamps.
You can view all of the final projects at CruzHacks 2024 Project Gallery on Devpost.
Tech Cares Winning Teams
Sustainability
1st Place
Driven by drought concerns, HydroSense tackles daily water waste in showers. Our device monitors water usage, temperature, and duration for up to 4 users, presenting data on an interactive website. It recommends optimal shower times based on local drought patterns, aids in budgeting, and even uses a chatbot to help users understand their water habits. By optimizing this daily routine, HydroSense empowers individuals to make a real impact on water conservation.
2nd Place
Super Mario and The Binding of Isaac. Helps promote sustainability by convincing people to plant seeds and trees.
Education
1st Place
Pomodoro, designed by students for students, addresses the challenge of managing time amidst academic pressures. It's not just an app but a transformative tool for enhancing learning efficiency. Utilizing Generative AI and advanced natural language processing, Pomodoro offers features like AI-generated notes from lectures, real-time chat assistance for study queries, customized practice tests, and efficient document searching with FAISS technology. Additionally, it includes course management, homework tracking, and a Pomodoro timer to optimize study sessions. This comprehensive suite of features aims to simplify daily schedules, improve focus, and enrich the student learning experience.
"How Likely Am I to Pass?" is a platform aimed at aiding students in choosing their classes more effectively than through word of mouth or Rate My Professor. It offers detailed information on courses and professors, supplemented by student reviews. A personalized questionnaire evaluates students' potential challenges, considering their academic habits and situation, to support their success in selected courses.
Justice
1st Place
Our project, "Tuition Shock," was inspired by our team's realization of the steep costs of higher education in the U.S. and the disparities in access to it. With team members personally affected and foreign exchange students astonished by the high tuition, we aimed to spotlight these issues. Our web service presents a heatmap showing tuition rates at community colleges and universities across the U.S., highlighting the gap between 2-year and 4-year education costs, the impact of geographic location on access to higher education, and differences based on degree length, school type, and tuition rates for in-state versus out-of-state students.
2nd Place
Inspired by the tendency to favor specific news sources due to habit, preference, or bias, our project aims to broaden perspectives. Our Google Chrome extension identifies the title of a news article, searches for similar articles across various sources, and presents these options to the user for exploration.
Health
1st Place
Our CruzHacks project, inspired by communication barriers faced by mute and deaf individuals, led to creating "holdit!," an app that bridges ASL and spoken English. Using deep learning, it translates ASL to voice, fostering inclusive conversations without the need for traditional interpreters or writing tools.
2nd Place
In drafting ideas for CH 2024, we created "SlugHug," inspired by "Kind Words" and a desire to counteract doomscrolling. Envisioned as more than a game, SlugHug aims to be a platform for relaxation, fun, and access to professional health support. Users send messages (slugs), which are monitored by AI for negativity and shared anonymously. Responses (hugs) are one-time, encouraging therapeutic exchanges. Each interaction is ephemeral, leaving only the memory of support and understanding.
Category Winners
Best Beginner
A week after losing air pods on a gym walk, extensive searching proved futile, highlighting a common issue in Santa Cruz: lost items being returned without the owner's knowledge due to numerous Lost and Founds. SlugSearch addresses this by centralizing Lost and Found services, allowing students to post and locate lost items easily.
Best SlugHack
Facing the challenge of navigating UCSC's class search website, Pisa, for course registration, we identified its limitations in accessibility and ease of use, especially on mobile devices. Recognizing the difficulty in sifting through over 1500 courses each quarter without a natural language search capability, we propose an enhanced mobile interface for Pisa. Additionally, we aim to integrate a chatbot utilizing a large language model (LLM) with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology. This chatbot would simplify finding and comparing classes by processing natural language queries against the UCSC course database, making course discovery more intuitive and accessible anytime, anywhere.
Best UI/UX
Slug Mommy, a web application, was created to ease the often challenging transition from high school to college, fostering discipline and consistency in positive habits. It offers personalized assistance for users to organize scheduled tasks, promoting discipline to maintain daily habits and goals.
Best AI
Navigating college, particularly for newcomers at UCSC, can be daunting due to the extensive web of resources available. To address this, the Sammy Support Crew was developed. It's an AI-powered tool that simplifies the search for campus resources, offering tailored guidance. Users interact with one of five AI bots—Sammy, Sunny, Delbert, Henry, Beatrice—each specializing in different areas like student life, academics, health, and transportation. These bots analyze user queries to provide relevant links, offices, and information, ensuring students are directed to the appropriate resource or office for their needs.
Event Metrics
The event metrics were similar to the previous year, with significant improvements on the operations.
Advisors
Alexi Sevastopoulos
Dr. Ebonée Williams
Mark Adams
2024 Board of Directors
Doug Erickson
Nathan Westrup
Amanda Rotella
Suz Howells
Mansi Saini
Nada Miljkovic
