Fall 2021 Hackathon

Sustaining Disruptions

October 22-24, 2021.

100+ Participants, 20 Teams, 3 winners.

The mounting global environmental crisis will inevitably change the way we think and act. Humans have adopted unsustainable patterns of behavior that threaten our finite planetary resources. We must design new strategies, develop new technologies, and restructure our societal habits in order to take steps towards a more sustainable future. For this hybrid hackathon, we asked students from across Maryland to investigate how we navigate major disruptions to our daily lives. Participants worked in teams to create solutions to problems within three tracks: Sustainable Living Spaces, Natural Disasters, and Environmental Justice.

Speakers and Experts

Dr. Jessica McCarthy

Assistant Professor of Geography @ Miami University

Dr. Tara Kirk Sell

Assistant Professor of Environmental Health & Engineering at JHU

Dan Teran

Co-founder of Managed by Q

Dr. Wendy Guan

Executive Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis @ Harvard University

Dante Swinton

Grass Director, Organizer at Clean Air Baltimore

Dr. Andy Ross

Center for Leadership Education Lecturer @ JHU

Dr. Ben Zaitchik

Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences @ JHU

Jena Garrahy

Network Program Manager for SCaN

Dr. Phil Yang

Professor of Geography & Geoinformation @ George Mason U

Winners

Natural Disasters Track Winner: Root Out Of Trouble (ROOT)

Environmental Justice Track Winner: Breathing Buildings

Sustainable Living Spaces Track Winner: Neighborhood Pantry

2021 Hackathon Sponsors

FastForwardU

FastForwardU is JHU’s hub for student entrepreneurship and innovation, serving students from all disciplines and campuses. FastForward U works with all students, from undergrad to post-doc, to support their entrepreneurial pursuits and turn good ideas into investable businesses.

Department of Computer Science at JHU

JHU Computer Science's faculty and students collaborate across Johns Hopkins divisions to advance discovery in areas ranging from AI, computational biology and medicine and information security to machine learning, robotics, and speEch and language processing.

Department of Materials Science and Engineering at JHU

JHU MatSci faculty and students continuously innovate - fabricating nanostructures, leveraging artificial intelligence and data science to discover new materials, and pushing the boundary of knowledge by peering at the structure of materials at the atomic scale using the most advanced characterization tools available.

Hackathon Photos!

Checking students in on day one

Our executive directors!

Sustaining disruptions was hosted at FastForwardU, JHU's innovation accelerator! Teams arrived in shifts in order to practice social distancing due to the pandemic.