KCL Tech hosts King's biggest ever overnight hackathon

The first of its kind, the two-day HackLondon event saw student teams gather in Bush House to develop innovative solutions and designs exploring how technology can contribute to better productivity.

KCL Tech student society collaborated with UCL Tech and Computer Science societies.to re-launch the inter-collegiate hackathon after a five-year hiatus due to the pandemic.

Students worked in teams of five and participated across three challenges - Technical, Non-Technical and the newly introduced Generative AI challenge. The theme of the event was productivity in daily life.

Projects included an inventory management system, a workspace finder, an AI multilingual financial advisor, and a chatbot for those with type 1 diabetes.

Suliman Sattar, President of KCL Tech said, "It was great to see students dedicated to completing their projects in the time they had by staying overnight on campus. All the participants were able to create innovative products that have scope for being expanded on and developed further."

Computer Science students Kai Strachan and Levi Yeo's team [email protected] won the Generative AI challenge with their AI-assisted mailbox mobile application. The Claude-3 powered app aims improve upon the user experience of traditional mailboxes by moving clutter into organised and priority-driven areas.

Team [email protected] said, "HackLondon was a brilliant event and we look forward to the editions to come over the next few years. We're grateful that it gave us the opportunity to create an application that genuinely has long term potential beyond the event."

The team won Nintendo Switches for their application.

"All the participants were able to create innovative products that have scope for being expanded on and developed further."

Suliman Sattar, President of KCL Tech

Teams first made their pitches at an informal roundtable, then formal pitching in front of their competitors within their challenge, before the top three teams pitched in front of all participants to determine the winner for each challenge.

The competition provided students with networking opportunities and to develop teamwork to time management skills as well as how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.

Dewi Sagita Pranata said "As an international student, I've found that networking is super important. This hackathon was awesome. I got to meet cool people, make new friends from other universities, and really level up my skills through some intense brainstorming and problem solving. Can't wait for the next one!"

All the HackLondon 2024 projects are available to view here.