MSOE hosted the second annual Hacksgiving: A.I. for Good Hackathon Nov. 21-24 in Diercks Hall. Hacksgiving is a hackathon that offers students an opportunity to use their skillsets to give back to the community by developing an A.I.-driven solution to support a local nonprofit organization.

This year’s nonprofit partner was Discovery World, a science and technology museum and aquarium located in Milwaukee. The problem statement challenged students to develop a solution that enhances visitor interactions with Discovery World exhibits.

Students were presented with the problem statement on Thursday, Nov. 21 at the kickoff celebration, and then they divided into teams or worked individually to solve the problem during work time on Friday and Saturday. They put the finishing touches on their projects Sunday morning and presented their solutions to the judges Sunday afternoon.

This year’s Hacksgiving had double the participation from the inaugural hackathon in 2023 with more than 70 students comprising 10 teams. New this year, students from Cristo Rey Jesuit High School were invited to participated in the final day of the event to get an inside look at a collegiate-level hackathon and watch the final presentations.

Hacksgiving was developed and supported by Dr. Jeremy Kedziora, PieperPower Endowed Chair in Artificial Intelligence. Ben Paulson, computer science major and president of the A.I. Club, helped develop and organize the event.

“I saw some extremely passionate builders really hoping to make a difference for Discovery World and everyone who visits,” said Paulson.

The hackathon was judged by Robert Bardunias, adjunct assistant professor; Evan Jackson ’23, experience designer at Discovery World; Kedziora and Paulson.

The winning solutions were handed over to Discovery World to utilize as they choose to enhance their visitor experiences. “I’m excited to see what Discovery World does with the solutions the teams have built,” said Paulson.

The winning teams included:

• First Place $3,000: Discovery Mate
• Description: Discovery Mate developed a custom AI-framework to minimize hallucinations, allow real-time page translation and text-to-speech, voice interruptible chat-bot conversations with real-time language switching, an exhibit recommendation engine and more.
• Team Members: Alhagie Boye, Olek Drobek, Caleb Gray, Bart Gebka, Sonia Grade, Autumn Mizer, Alex Neher
• Second Place $2,000: Yarvis
• Description: Team Yarvis proposed the usage of Bluetooth repeaters to detect where users of an application are, telling them what exhibit room they’re in, pointing the application towards exhibits to tell them about it, and ultimately bringing the entire institution to life just by walking around.
• Team Members: Mazen Hamid, Travis Jankowski, Alex Lopez, Noah Nieberle, Patrick Rafferty, Gabby Sladek
• Third Place $1,000: Liquid Vision
• Description: Liquid Vision focused on the interactions users would have while building scalable tech solutions, including gamified learning badges, scaling of QR codes on exhibits, and asking questions about exhibits.
• Team Members: Sydney Balboni, Mason Beynon, Reagan Burkemper, Zoe Kirkman, Kathlyn Leanos, Adam Swedlund, Michael Wood
• Honorable Mentions
• Gio: Giovanni Martinez-Cortez Salvador
• Explore Discovery: Andy Dao, Leigh Goetsch, Benjamin Leshin, Aiden Miller, Andrew Needham, Evan Roegner, Miles Trompeter