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CruzHacks 2021 Winners and Top Projects

NOTE: Winners will present their projects on February 3 at Santa Cruz Works VirBELA webinar. JOIN US

After 36 hours of hacking, CruzHacks 2021 has successfully come to an end! Hackers collaborated to create solutions to real-world challenges through the power of technology, collaboration, and innovative thinking.

CruzHacks broke its own record, for the highest number of attendees, with over 575+ individuals from 185+ schools and across 25+ countries!

Along with the listed categories, CruzHacks incorporated secret prizes for the participants. Major sponsors such as UCSC Center for Information and Entrepreneurial Development, Blackstone LaunchPad, 1517 Fund, echoAR, and Major League Hacking have contributed to the $50,000+ in prizes with their own categories as well. Pinnacle, also known as “the Olympics of Hackathons,” has invited four winners to compete with hackers from the top 50 collegiate hackathons in an ultimate hack-off in September 2021. Projects were judged based on the following categories: Technology, Design, Completion, and Learning.

CruzHacks 2021 Winners

  • Med-Chain (Tech Cares - Health Hacks): Aids doctors and medical organizations to visualize data points (which are readily available) in a better and interactive way, which will help the institutes in better decision making for the current as near-future situation.

  • Justify.ai (Tech Cares - Justice Hacks): Generates simplifications of Legal English and contract clauses in plain English terms which are much easier to understand.

  • Honeycomb - Shop Greener (Tech Cares - Earth Hacks: Environmental Impact-to-Action): A Chrome extension that finds green alternatives to products on Amazon by combing through the consumer's currently viewed product page.

  • Cruz Connections (Best Cruz Hack, MLH - Best Use of Datastax Astra): An interactive 3D graph that allows you to see how courses and departments at UCSC are connected via prerequisites.

  • Recon (Best UI/UX, Orion Hacks - 2nd Place): A progressive web application that lets law enforcement and governments prepare and predict future crime, overall addressing recent improper police responses.

  • SlugLog (Best Beginner Hack): Allows users to capture a picture of a banana slug and pin it on google maps based on their current location.

  • Voting-as-a-Service (MLH - Best Use of Google Cloud Platform, Sponsor - 1517 Grant for Most Novel Hack, Sponsor - UCSC CIED & Blackstone Launchpad): A platform for organizations to hold transparent elections on the Ethereum network.

  • SmallTalk (MLH - Best Use of Google Cloud Platform): An application designed for users, who have difficult maintaining conversation or with social anxiety, to build conversational skills around meeting new people and learning more about those around us.

  • Health in a Nutshell (MLH - Best Domain Name from Domain.com): Incorporates quizzes from mental to physical health, a health bot, and a jar of laughter sender.

  • WasteMaster (Sponsor - UCSC CIED & Blackstone Launchpad): Allows user to simply throw the trash into its appropriate bin without having to consider regulations and rules on which items can be recycled.

  • Cheesecake (Sponsor - UCSC CIED & Blackstone Launchpad): Provides an approachable virtual pet mood tracking environment encouraging positive feedback loops.

  • VacciNATION (Sponsor - UCSC CIED & Blackstone Launchpad): A web application where users can get realtime data and information regarding the symptoms of previously vaccinated people, as well as use Keras predicting model to predict any possible symptoms they could discover in themselves if they were to take the vaccine.

  • CoronAR-19 (Sponsor - echoAR): Provides up-to-date coronavirus statistics and AR capabilities with a 3D model of covid-19 using echoAR.

  • Archie - Warmer of Snacks (Sponsor - Pinnacle, MLH - Best Hardware Hack Sponsored by Digi-Key, Sponsor - UCSC CIED & Blackstone Launchpad): An attempt to take back desktop computer cookery from big chicken and put it into the hands of well deserving engineers.

  • Moodify (Secret Prize - Most Ambitious): A web application users run when listening to Spotify on their desktop. It takes what the user is listening to and if it finds that the song is sad, then it intervenes by suggesting a more soothing/uplifting song so that they may feel better.

  • Canvas Year in Review (Secret Prize - Wildest Idea): A browser extension designed to help you get an overview of your educational experience on the online learning system, Canvas.

  • Remindbot (Secret Prize - Most Useful): Users can set a time and date when they want to meet with other people and whoever reacts to the message is agreeing to meet at that time and will be notified once its time to meet.

Check out other inventive CruzHacks projects to learn more!

CruzHacks was formally known as HackUCSC, and launched in April 2014. The founders were Mark Adams, Brent Haddad, and Doug Erickson.