Every year, LMU students compete in a “hackathon” hosted by Loyola Marymount University’s student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery. The daylong coding challenge offers students a chance to get creative with computing and make something entirely new.
2024’s theme was “Hacking for Education,” a focus chosen by club leadership, including ACM Vice President Eylul Akgul ’24, a native of Turkey who double majored in psychology and computer science.
“We aim for a balanced theme that is broad enough to inspire creativity yet specific enough to keep projects manageable, especially given our limited time,” Akgul said. “Participants created projects that taught users something.”
Teams of up to four students convened with an idea and a dream, to spend the day making their ideas a reality. Or, as close to a reality as possible — students were allowed to explain their intentions to judges, regardless of how far into the process they got with their projects.
Projects at the 2024 hackathon ranged from a maze-inspired math game that requires players to solve equations to continue wending their way through the maze to a trivia game that centered on topics the programmers themselves were interested in, including inside jokes from the Computer Science Department’s Keck Lab.
The winning team created “Amulet,” a wearable device and web application that can track the user’s emotional states throughout the day using speech and vocal analysis provided by an AI model. Kael Adair, a computer science major who graduates in 2026 and a member of the winning team, said the hackathon was the perfect way to apply classroom lessons to a practical project.
“Working with my team was a great learning experience for everybody involved. I learned how to use new styling libraries and front-end frameworks from my teammates, and I got to teach them a bit about hardware when I was building the physical device,” Adair said.
ACM President Aidan Dionisio said the collaboration, along with mentorship by professors as well as alumni who come back to support the event, is a crucial part of the event’s success. Expanding the hackathon into hardware, he said, was a new and exciting direction for the event.
Dionisio graduates with his B.S. in computer science this year, but will be staying on at the Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering as a 4+1 student. He said he wants to branch out a bit before entering the workforce.
“I think there’s a lot more for me to learn at Seaver,” Dionisio said. “I mostly focused on game development at the beginning of my time here, but I’ve realized there is so much more to computer science and I want to take the time to explore that. I find it hard to not want to be here. The community in the Computer Science Department is just fantastic. I spend more time probably in the computer science lab than I do in my own apartment.”
Indeed, LMU’s Computer Science Department has a reputation for fostering togetherness and an atmosphere of collaboration. The Keck Lab is not just the home of review sessions and TA office hours, but also a place to hang out and bond. Dionisio joked that the cliche “computer science” image of one guy in a dark room coding is the farthest thing from the truth.
“Collaboration is key in the computer science field, much like in any other specialized area,” he said. “Just as there are various medical specialties, computer science encompasses a range of skills and roles. From designing user interfaces to ensuring cross-device compatibility, it’s a team effort. Asking for help isn’t cheating; it’s part of the learning process. Even experienced programmers encounter roadblocks and seek assistance. So, whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned coder, teamwork and learning from others are fundamental.”
View all the projects developed in collaboration during LMU Hacks 2024: https://lmuhacks-2024.devpost.com/project-gallery.
