Rocky Top Triumph

On a recent September weekend, a squad representing UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) joined teams of students from all over the South at the University of Tennessee’s VolHacks III. Brainstorming and developing “Study Buddy,” an app for Amazon Alexa, Thao Tran, Loyn Howie, Keshav Shaw and prospective CCI student, Tray Keller, earned the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) Sponsor Award. Designed to assist with scheduling and time management, Study Buddy allows students to dictate assignment details out loud to Alexa, which then transfers the information to a database that organizes each based on due dates. Touted as, “36 caffeine-filled, sleepless hours to brainstorm, build, break, test, and deploy whatever they can imagine,” VolHacks is a student-driven innovation and collaboration competition to allow computer science students the opportunity to interact with professional mentors, recruiters and like-minded students. Annually, Major League Hacking (MLH) sanctions more than 100 hackathons, each offering students a chance to hone their skills in a competitive environment, produce original work and be rewarded with great prizes.

Lea Thompson (’20)

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