Five Hockaday upper classmen participated as the only all girls’ team in EarthxHack 2018, a 24-hour hackathon, held at Fair Park last weekend. The event is designed to inspire, educate and empower students and professionals to use technology to solve real issues plaguing the world today. The teams were composed of 2-5 people, and they were provided a space to inspire creative thinking to build game change prototypes to be implemented on a global scale.

Junior Isabel Peppard, Sophomores Ann Segismundo, Maisy Crow, Riyana Daulat, and Karen Lin, with no previous coding or IT experience, but a passion for environmental issues, decided to create a group to enter the hacking competition to learn more on how they could positively impact the world. After introductory coding training, the Hockaday students worked collaboratively to develop an app that would allow users to connect to use public transportation and increase safety, while reducing the carbon footprint for transportation.  They then pitched the idea of “ROAMMATE” to the EarthxHack panel of judges. Riyana Daulat shared, “As president of the All Green Club at Hockaday, it is events such as EarthxHack that give us a platform to share our love and concern for the Earth. It is our collective responsibility to take care of this planet, and I am so grateful to Maisy, Isabel, Ann, and Karen for participating in this event. I am looking forward to making our app a reality!”

 

Competing against 79 school teams, and one other high school team, the Hockaday team and their ROAMMATE app won first place! A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) placed second. ROAMMATE won best overall app and the Hockaday team received $4,000 dollars. They have been contacted by the Dallas Mavericks about partnering together to build the app.