1st place: prizes up to $100 per participant, 2nd place: up to $50 per participant
This track is an intersection of finding creative solutions, building empathy, and developing transformative technologies that enable universal health for millions around the world. With the goal of bringing impactful change to the practice and distribution of medicine, this track focuses on making healthcare both accessible and preventative. This track is suitable for teams dedicated to improving technologies in illness diagnosis, global health literacy, patient compliance, and information storage.
Challenge Questions:
Challenge: Create an app to improve mood and reduce stress.
Challenge: Design a tool to suggest healthy meals and find fresh food nearby.
Challenge: Develop a fun way to track and encourage physical activity.

Sponsored by Capital One
Best Financial Hack – 1st place: 250 USD amazon gift cards awarded to each hacker (Awarded by Capital One)
2nd place: up to $50 per participant (Awarded by HackNYU)
Financial technology is critical to the global economy and people's daily lives. This is your chance to change the game in fintech. Whether it's an innovative payment solution, helping consumers shop smarter, making financing more accessible, or a creative way to improve financial literacy, we want to see your boldest ideas in action. The track is intentionally vague to let you bring your own creativity to it! Judging will be based on the project's creativity, complexity, and completeness.
You can optionally take advantage of Capital One Hackathon API, Nessie (api.nessieisreal.com). It provides mock banking/transaction data to help spearhead your idea.
Challenge Questions:
How will you reimagine banking?

Sponsored by Nord Security
1st place: prize bundle of $ 250 per hacker, 2nd place: prize bundle of $ 250 per hacker
Prize: 2 teams could win 1 year long subscriptions + 1GB of free data to each hacker. This gift would include:
NordVPN - Ensuring secure and private online experiences.
NordPass - Simplifying password management and enhancing security.
Incogni - Safeguarding online privacy by removing personal data from various databases.
Saily - eSIM data for international travel.
As technology advances, security and privacy have become critical components of our digital lives. The challenge is to create innovative solutions that enhance security and privacy for users, safeguarding sensitive data and protecting the broader digital ecosystem. This track emphasizes creativity, usability, and real-world impact while addressing significant cybersecurity challenges.
Challenge Questions:
Personal Data Protection Tool Challenge: Participants are tasked with developing a tool that empowers users to better control their personal data. The tool should offer features like data encryption, password management, or permission control for apps and services. Focus on creating a user-friendly interface and addressing real-world privacy concerns like data leaks or unauthorized tracking.
Phishing Defense Simulator Challenge Create an interactive application or game that educates users about phishing scams and how to avoid them. The simulator could include realistic scenarios, quizzes, and feedback mechanisms to test and improve user awareness of cybersecurity threats.
IoT Security Enhancement Challenge: Build a solution that enhances security for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This could involve creating a lightweight intrusion detection system, secure firmware update mechanism, or a dashboard for monitoring and controlling IoT security settings.

1st place: prizes up to $100 per participant, 2nd place: up to $50 per participant
Interactive media and design in the tech industry encompass a wide range of creative and technical fields. It involves the creation of digital experiences that engage users through various forms, such as websites, mobile apps, games, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and more. Design plays a crucial role in shaping user experiences by focusing on usability, aesthetics, and functionality.
Challenge Questions:
Create an Interactive Experience: Participants are tasked with designing and building a digital experience that engages users. This could be anything from a simple interactive webpage or a multimedia storytelling platform to a basic game or interactive art piece.
Design a User-Centric Interface: Challenge hackers to design a user interface for a given scenario or platform. They'll need to focus on intuitive design, usability, and aesthetics, considering the needs of potential users without limitations on the specific platform or device.
Prototype a Creative Tool: Participants will develop a prototype for a digital tool that fosters creativity or solves a common problem. This could range from a design tool, a storytelling platform, a digital art generator, or any tool that encourages creativity and user engagement.

Prize: 1st Place = 2000 USD for the hacking team, 2nd Place = 1000 USD for the hacking team, 3rd and 4th places: mechanical keyboards

Blockchain technology is reshaping the internet. Solana, a high-speed and low-cost blockchain, empowers developers to build Web3 applications that scale for millions of users. This track is for hackers eager to explore decentralized finance (DeFi), on-chain Real World Assets, smart contracts, gaming, and beyond. Whether you’re a blockchain veteran or just getting started, bring your ideas to life on Solana and help shape the future of decentralized technology. Feel free to reach out to our mentor for any questions or guidance!

Challenge questions:
- Can you build a platform that brings real world assets on-chain?
- Can you build better tooling to improve the Solana developer experience?
- Can you build an on chain game?
- Can you improve the current landscape of on-chain payments?
- Do you have a ground breaking idea that doesn't fit in the above categories? As long as its built on Solana or to improve Solana development, this challenge is for you!

Prizes up to 25 USD per hacker
Challenge: Create the funniest, most meme-worthy project ever. Bonus points for internet virality potential.
Examples: A bot that generates "unexpected item in bagging area" memes or a website that rates your laugh.

1 Apple Air Tag per hacker
75% of your team of 3 or more people must be in high school, cannot be a college student

One team will be awarded with this prize up to 25 USD per participant
You did it, you won everyone over. If most hackers submit your hack as their top choice, you won!

One team will be awarded with this prize up to 25 USD per participant
Something didn't go quite right or you almost had it perfect but then one bug messed it all up? No big deal! All hacks are good hacks, even if they're not so good.

One team will be awarded with this prize up to 25 USD per participant
100% of your team of 3 or more people must be beginners, cannot be a college student

Prize: 1 TB SSD per hacker
Challenge: Build a hack that is way too ambitious for a weekend, yet you dared to dream big anyway.
Examples: A fully functioning VR metaverse

MongoDB Atlas takes the leading modern database and makes it accessible in the cloud! Get started with a $50 credit for students or sign up for the Atlas free forever tier (no credit card required). Along with a suite of services and functionalities, you'll have everything you need to manage all of your data, and you can get a headstart with free resources from MongoDB University! Build a hack using MongoDB Atlas for a chance to win a M5GO IoT Starter Kit for you and each member of your team.

Want to take your Python skills to the next level? Streamlit is an open-source Python library that makes it easy to share and build custom web apps for machine learning, data science, and more. Instead of writing Python scripts without a UI, you can create a beautiful web app, complete with widgets and data visualizations, and deploy it for free to the Streamlit Community Cloud. You can even build a fully functional LLM-powered app with just 25 lines of code! Hack with Streamlit this weekend for your chance to win an Arduino Tiny ML Kit for you and each member of your team.

AI has upended what we can accomplish with technology. Reach Capital invests in the next generation of founders and technical talent, and they want you to use AI to transform the future of learning, health, and work. Build a project that impacts one (or all!) of these areas for a chance to win a Logitech webcam for each member of your team and the exclusive opportunity to discuss your creation with Reach Capital’s team of expert investors. The winning team will also be considered for a grand prize — if chosen you’ll be flown out to San Francisco to meet with the Reach Capital team in person!

GoDaddy Registry is giving you everything you need to be the best hacker no matter where you are. Register your domain name with GoDaddy Registry for a chance to win some amazing prizes!

Generative AI is rapidly changing the landscape of software development. This category challenges you to build novel applications that leverage the power of Generative AI APIs. Think outside the box and integrate cutting-edge AI models to create innovative solutions with real-world impact.

To participate, utilize publicly available Generative AI APIs (like those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, Llama, IBM Watson, or Google Gemini) to develop a unique and functional application. This could include:
AI-powered creative tools: Design an app that allows users to generate unique marketing copy, translate languages in real-time, or create personalized learning experiences.
Intelligent assistants and automation: Build a chatbot that can provide insightful customer support, or a system that automates complex tasks using natural language processing.
Next-generation content creation platforms: Develop a platform that empowers users to generate high-quality images, write different kinds of creative text formats, or compose original music with AI assistance.
This is your chance to get hands on with cutting edge tech, put your skills on display, and of course, win some awesome prizes!

Best social media content, with a hacknyu tag, gets a weighted plushie!