Students create the future of computing at HackPrinceton

By Aaron Nathans

Photo by Frank Wojciechowski

About 500 students gathered at Princeton University's Friend Center over the weekend to take part in this spring’s HackPrinceton. Students from roughly 100 schools across the United States and Canada spent the weekend creating hardware and software projects.

Above are, from left to right: John Larmie of the University of Manitoba, Cherry Vong of the University of Waterloo, and Selina Wang, a first-year Princeton University student who served as a judge.

The overall winner of the weekend was a University of Toronto team that created Tractive, a virtual DJ set that takes its instructions from motion sensors.

“The goal of the weekend is to give students the space, and the mentorship and the resources, so they can just sit down and build and learn whatever they want to build. Sometimes during the year it’s hard to find time to do what you want to do. You’re caught up in assignments and exams,” said Erica Wu, a junior majoring in computer science and a co-director of the event.

“We give them food, we give them space, we bring together tech companies. We give them caffeine. And at the end of the weekend, it’s really awesome to see what each individual team dreams up over the course of the weekend,” Wu said.

Participants came from all over, from East Coast schools like Princeton, Rutgers University, Columbia University and Harvard University, to the University of Texas at Austin, Florida State University, Stanford University, the University of California-San Diego, and Canadian schools like the University of Waterloo and McMaster University.