Cypher V is the College of William and Mary's annual hackathon. It's an opportunity for students to come together for a weekend and learn new stuff, create cool projects, and win prizes. This year, our goal is to make the event more accessible and welcoming to everyone, regardless of their skill or experience levels. We hope that Cypher V will be a place for people to innovate and develop things that they had never considered before, so please join us in making this goal a reality!

Eligibility

All college students (undergraduate and graduate) or recent graduates (within 12 months of the event) are eligible to participate!

Requirements

Please submit the source code for your project, as well as a description of your work and any presentations you created.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$5,150 in prizes

Grand Prize

This prize is for the team whose project ranks the highest overall in every category.

Entrepreneurship: Category Prize

This prize goes to the team who scores the highest in the entrepreneurship category.

Ingenuity: Category Prize

This prize goes to the team who scores the highest in the ingenuity category.

Presentation Quality: Category Prize

This prize goes to the team who scores the highest in the presentation quality category.

Complexity: Category Prize

This prize goes to the team who scores the highest in the complexity category.

Capital One's Best Financial Hack (4)

Best Financial Hack wins a $250 Amazon gift card per team member!

Ferguson's Best Security Hack

Each member of the team will receive a bluetooth speaker AND a $50 Amazon gift card!

Best Use of Google Cloud Platform

Google Home Minis for each team member

Best Domain Name from Domain.com

Raspberry Pi & PiHut Essential Kit for each team member

Best IoT Hack Using a Qualcomm Device

410C Dragonboard for each team member

Snap Kit Prize

Each winning team member will receive awesome Casio calculator watches!

CoStar Group's Best Use of Machine Learning in Commercial Real Estate

Each member of the winning team will receive a $50 Amazon gift card and a Parrot Mambo Drone!

CGI Federal's Data Visualization Hack

CGI is offering $75 Amazon gift cards to each member of the team with the best data visualization hack that provides a keen insight on the FIFA Athlete dataset! CGI recommends using the D3.js (https://d3js.org/) and/or the SAP HANA platform within the solution. Please see the CGI table for more information.

The Presidential Challenge

Katherine Rowe has a challenge for Cypher V participants: write a web scraper to find all instances of "The College of William and Mary" and change them to "William & Mary"! The prize for the team that completes this challenge the best will be a lunch with the President and your plus ones!

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Robert Michael Lewis

Robert Michael Lewis
Chair and Associate Professor of Computer Science at William & Mary

Peter Kemper

Peter Kemper
Professor of Computer Science at William & Mary

Bin Ren

Bin Ren
Professor of Computer Science at William & Mary

Kevin Moran

Kevin Moran
Professor of Computer Science at William & Mary

Jacob McCollum

Jacob McCollum
Whereoware

Matthew Leier

Matthew Leier
CGI Federal

Jeff Boyer & Company

Jeff Boyer & Company
Ferguson

Judging Criteria

  • Entrepreneurship
    The project's potential beyond the hackathon: does this project have commercial viability? Projects with the greatest entrepreneurship are not necessarily the projects with the highest potential profitability, but that satisfy consumer needs.
  • Ingenuity
    This incorporates creativity and originality. Projects with high ingenuity should be unique, and solve a problem in a novel and effective way.
  • Completeness
    How much did the team do with their time? Projects that score highly should be polished and fully functional.
  • Expo Quality
    Was the expo demonstration thorough and convincing? Well presented projects are compelling and have complete and rehearsed demonstrations.
  • Complexity
    Was the project of a high technical difficulty? High scoring teams are ambitious in their undertakings.
  • Judges' Impressions
    Did the project stand out to you? What was your overall impression?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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