IC Hack 19: The students inventing the future

From smart shopping to software that can sense your opinions: more than 400 students gathered at Imperial for the UK’s largest student-led hackathon.

IC Hack 19 brought together talented programmers, designers and hackers from Imperial and universities across the UK. Over 24 hours, they were challenged to come up with new apps, games and innovative technology that could revolutionise industries and change the way we live our lives.

It was impressive to see such a diverse and talented group coming together to develop new solutions to very real problems. Chintan Patel Chief Technology Officer for Cisco UK and Ireland

Organised by DoCSoc, the student society for the Department of Computing at Imperial, IC Hack 19 was powered by international tech giant Cisco and was sponsored by global companies including Visa, American Express, and Imperial-founded software company Improbable.

During a 24 hour hacking marathon, participants were invited to compete for prizes across several challenges, including categories such as best educational hack, most helpful hack and most ethical hack.

Hack. Make. Innovate.

The Cisco Best Collaboration-Based Hack was awarded to Emotivote, who developed an extension to Cisco’s Webex team-working software that uses sentiment analysis of speech and video to give real-time insights into how teams are feeling about suggestions and ideas.

The Most Helpful Hack award went to team LostFound, who created an app that would allow students to report lost items on campus and be alerted when potential matched items are found by others.

The DoCSoc Choice Award went to RFIDCheckout, who invented a checkout system that can automatically detect the content of a person’s shopping bag without needing to scan each item. The team say that their technology could eliminate the need for self-checkout counters and long queues at supermarkets.

Other winners included software that can analyse handwritten maths equations for mistakes, an app that can suggest recipes based on food in a person’s fridge to reduce food waste, and a blockchain based system to tackle fake news.

Chintan Patel, Chief Technology Officer for Cisco UK and Ireland said: “We were incredibly proud to support IC Hack 19. It was impressive to see such a diverse and talented group coming together to develop new solutions to very real problems. Helping to support this next generation of talent with the skills and tools needed for the future workforce is core to Cisco’s strategy in the UK.”

Fawaz Shah, DoC Soc member and one of the organisers of IC Hack 19, said: '"IC Hack 19 was the largest iteration of IC Hack we've ever held, attracting over 400 of the brightest students in London and beyond! From hosting Cisco as our Title Sponsor to being featured on BBC News for the first time, we're astonished at how IC Hack has grown over the years. We ran a huge range of new activities for our attendees this year such as a photo booth, a bubble tea stand, popcorn stands and more, as well as now-traditional activities like midnight pizza. The quality of the hacks which were presented at the Closing Ceremony blew us all away, and especially impressed our sponsors.

"We'd like to say a huge thank you to our very generous sponsors, without whom an event of this scale could not take place, as well as to all the volunteers who helped run the show throughout the weekend. Now onto IC Hack 20!"

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