We hope you will join us for the 5th annual McGill Physics Hackathon! Whether you are a high school, CEGEP, undergraduate, or graduate student, anyone with an interest in programming and the physical sciences is invited to attend and hone their programming, scientific, and communication skills.

In addition to our traditional big competitions, this year, we will be featuring many smaller coding challenges of varying difficulty. Anyone and everyone can walk away having learned and accomplished something!

Eligibility

Anyone with an interest in physical sciences and/or computing is invited! Especially students from any high school, CEGEP or university, from any province or country!

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$CAD4,050 in prizes

First Place (2)

Second Place (2)

Third Place

People's Choice

The team with the most votes on Devpost wins!

Astro Prize

Each member of the winning team will receive their very own Celestron FirstScope Telescope AND some McGill Space Institute swag!

Machine Learning Prize

An award for the best project under the broad category of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning. The members of the winning team will have the opportunity to have a 15-minute virtual meeting with Dr. Yoshua Bengio, the world-renowned expert in artificial intelligence and scientific director of Mila! (Winners will also each receive a copy of the fascinating The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity by Arthur I. Miller).

Space Explorers Prize

The members of the winning team will each receive a gorgeous Space Explorer notebook from Kurzgesagt and two great books: "I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life" by Ed Yong, and "The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars" by Dana Sobel! And more importantly, your project might be used to teach kids physics!

Physics Education: The Uncertainties Challenge

The members of the winning team will each receive a copy of "Thing Explainer" and "What If?" by Randall Munroe, who you may know as the artist of the xkcd webcomic! And, your project might be used to help train young physicists!

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Mayank Singh

Mayank Singh
McGill Physics

Deniz Ölçek

Deniz Ölçek
McGill Physics

Guillaume Shippee

Guillaume Shippee
Qualcomm

Pranav Sanghavi

Pranav Sanghavi
West Virginia University

Bill Coish

Bill Coish
McGill Physics / INTRIQ

Andrew Cumming

Andrew Cumming
McGill Physics

Gabriel Chernitsky

Gabriel Chernitsky
McGill Physics

Carolina Cruz-Vinaccia

Carolina Cruz-Vinaccia
McGill Physics

Colin Fuller

Colin Fuller
Spring Discovery, Inc

Rabea Seyboldt

Rabea Seyboldt
McGill Physics

MacCallum Robertson

MacCallum Robertson
UC Davis

Matthew Lundy

Matthew Lundy
McGill Physics

Ashley Da Silva

Ashley Da Silva
VIA

Judging Criteria

  • Technical Execution
    Did teams solve a challenging technical problem? Did teams get a working demo completed within the allotted time? Is it remarkable that teams could hack this project in just a day or two?
  • Communication
    How effective/engaging/coherent is the presentation overall? Is there a good rapport in the team? Is the presentation of the physics and the methods used to present the problem solution clear and understandable?
  • Aesthetics
    Is the solution beautiful/elegant/polished? Does the solution show the beauty of scientific computing?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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