What is HackJPS?

HackJPS will be a hybrid (in person & virtual) hackathon hosted by students of John P. Stevens High School in Edison, NJ during the weekend of June 8th, 2024. This is the third iteration of the HackJPS program following successful hybrid and virtual events in 2023 and 2020.

Participation will be open to middle and high school students (aged 13+). Participants may have any level of experience, or none at all. We are welcoming to beginners and experts alike!

Additionally, you will be able to attend in-person or virtual workshops hosted by sponsors or student organizations, exposing you to a multitude of other topics that might interest them or be relevant to your project.

For more information and updates, make sure to join our Discord server and check out our website.

Registration

Please register for HackJPS here on Devpost as well as through our registration form. This is a requirement!

Schedule

All times are in EST.

HackJPS will open shortly after 9:00 AM on June 8th. Our in-person venue will be open from 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM on that date, but HackJPS will continue virtually until June 9th at 6:00 PM. All projects must be submitted by that time.

Date	Times	Event
Saturday, 6/8	9:00 AM	Venue opens
	9:20 AM - 9:50 AM	Opening ceremony (categories released, submission period begins)
	9:50 AM - 10:10 AM	Team formation / working period
	10:10 AM - 10:40 AM	JPS Research Society Ideathon / Workshop
	10:40 AM - 11:00 AM	Working period
	11:00 AM - 11:30 AM	NJIT Robotics Workshop - Data Science
	11:30 AM - 11:50 AM	Working period
	11:50 AM - 12:20 PM	JPS CyberHawks Workshop - Web Dev
	12:20 PM - 12:45 PM	Lunch served / Working period
	12:45 PM - 1:15 PM	JPS CyberHawks Workshop - USACO & Competitive Programming
	1:15 PM - 1:35 PM	Working period
	1:35 PM - 2:15 PM	JPS Robotics Workshop - Object Recognition w/ Teachable Machine + Mechanical & Electronics skills
	2:15 PM - 2:35 PM	Working period
	2:35 PM - 2:50 PM	Giveaways & Closing Announcements
	2:50 PM - 3:00 PM	Cleanup & venue closure
Sunday, 6/9/24	6:00 PM	Submission ends, judging begins
Monday, 6/10/24	6:00 PM	JPS Girls Who Code Workshop - Portfolio Website Design
Saturday, 6/15/24	11:00 AM	CANCELLED Cybersecurity Workshop - CTF Challenge ($100 in gift cards available!)
	6:00 PM	Closing Ceremony (Winners Announced)

Eligibility

Any students aged 13-18 are welcome to participate. Participants may form teams of up to four members or work alone.

Prize List

We are still deciding which prizes will be assigned to which categories (and what the exact categories will be), but for now, here is the full list of available prizes! They are worth over $60,000.

All participants will receive free access to Wolfram|One for 30 days. We are unable to include this in our total prize value, but one month of Wolfram|One Personal can be valued at $36. Wolfram|One includes both Desktop and Cloud access, full access to the Wolfram Language and Knowledgebase, FreeCDF Deployment, 5000 Wolfram|Alpha API calls, 5000 Cloud Credits, 2 installations per user and 2 GB of Cloud Storage.
Up to 32 individual winning students will receive the Wolfram Award, which includes a full free year of Wolfram|One Professional Edition valued at $1,660/year. Wolfram|One Professional is an industrial-scale plan containing upgraded features and much higher quotas compared to Wolfram|One Personal.
While not considered a prize, any student who utilizes Wolfram tech in their project will be eligible for a $500 scholarship to one of Wolfram's summer programs if they apply and are accepted.
Gen.xyz is offering 10 .xyz domains for free for one year. Each one is worth $10/year.
Interview Cake is offering up to 50 full access licenses, each valued at $50.
Desmos is contributing a $45 Swag Pack; we may give away the items at the in-person event.
Verbwire is offering a total value of $5,000 in premium API credits that will be split across two Verbwire-specific categories.
A fellow robotics team, the Regal Eagles, is contributing 16 $10 Amazon gift cards and two Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W units.
Art of Problem Solving is offering 4 $25 coupons.
TLEEM is offering 30% discount coupons for Xentain, a cloud computing & VPS company.

Requirements

Specific categories and related criteria will be disclosed during the opening ceremony.

Requirements for all submissions:

Should be submitted here on Devpost
All team members should be added to the submission in Devpost
Each team member's school name should be specified on the project submission page
The project does not need to be 100% completed nor 100% functional but there should be some demonstrable progress
A 1-3 minute video demonstrating part or all of your project's features as well as a brief overview of how you put it together, including a description of your codebase (can be uploaded to YouTube or another public site)
- Including a screen recording of your code while you are explaining it will help us make a more accurate judgement regarding the quality of your project
A link to your project's source code (either in an online repository or publicly accessible via a file sharing service like Google Drive)
- You can also upload it directly to your submission as a ZIP archive

Verbwire Hackathon Submission Policy

These policies apply to the two Verbwire categories (in addition to the general requirements):

The project must have implemented the Verbwire API.
The project should mention the use of the Verbwire API on their submission page.
The source code should be in a public repository on GitHub with instructions. There must be a clear description of the working of your application in the README file. Add the relevant links of the working app to the README file too.
Include the GitHub link of your publicly visible source code in your submission. Projects with broken links will be disqualified.
Verbwire reserves the right to feature your project and code on its website and marketing materials.
Create a short video demo of your application and upload to YouTube or any video sharing site. Make sure that any person watching the video is fully able to understand what the app does and what its functionalities are. Share the link on your Devfolio/Devpost submission.
Judging will be done by the Verbwire team based on submissions on Devfolio/Devpost, post the hackathon
Award of prizes will be at the Verbwire team's discretion and subject to the project meeting a minimum bar of quality. Prizes will be announced and disbursed within a couple of days after the hackathon.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$61,500 in prizes

Best Overall Hack

3 winners

All projects submitted to HackJPS will automatically be considered for this category. Projects that demonstrate a combination of technical talent, practicality, creativity, and presentational/explanatory skills are most likely to succeed.

Prizes:
1st: Wolfram Award (Wolfram|One Professional 1 year $1,660) for each member, $10 Amazon gift card for each member, Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member, 1 *.xyz domain free for 1 year
2nd: Wolfram Award (Wolfram|One Professional 1 year $1,660) for each member, Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member, 1 *.xyz domain free for 1 year
3rd: Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member, 1 *.xyz domain free for 1 year

Best Game Design

2 winners

Game development is a fun way to expand on your programming abilities. Projects submitted to this category don't necessarily need to be games written from the ground up — they can also be modifications/plugins/extensions to existing games, provided your project adds enough original functionality.

Prizes:
1st: Wolfram Award (Wolfram|One Professional 1 year $1,660) for each member, Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member, 1 *.xyz domain free for 1 year
2nd: Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member

Best Youth Hack

1 winner

We know there's a lot of middle school students here. That's okay! To make the playing field a bit fairer, teams where more than half the members (e.g. 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/4) are registered as middle school students will be eligible to receive this prize!

Prizes:
Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member, 1 *.xyz domain free for 1 year

Best Use of AI/ML

2 winners

If you indicate that your project uses any kind of artificial intelligence or machine learning technology, it will be considered for this category. This category is NOT necessarily for projects in which AI tools were used to write the code; instead, the focus is on integrating AI/ML technology into a project in a way that makes sense and is genuinely useful.

Prizes:
1st: Wolfram Award (Wolfram|One Professional 1 year $1,660) for each member, Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member
2nd: Wolfram Award (Wolfram|One Professional 1 year $1,660) for each member, Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member

Best Use of AI & Verbwire API

5 winners

See Best Use of AI/ML. Goes to teams which use AI in conjunction with the Verbwire API in building applications. Feel free to use MagicPilot.ai by Verbwire to build web3 programs using AI.

Prizes:
All members of each winning team receive $45 Verbwire Premium API Credit.

Most Innovative Use Of Verbwire API

5 winners

See Best Overall Hack. Goes to the best overall projects which use the Verbwire API.

Prizes:
All members of each winning team receive $45 Verbwire Premium API Credit.

Best Lab Simulation

2 winners

When students and staff are forced to stay home, such as during pandemics, it can be difficult to perform science experiments remotely or without equipment. We want you to help solve this problem by designing a digital lab experiment on any topic covered in your school district's science curriculum. You will not be scored based on what scientific topic you choose. It can be (for example) about an environmental science topic you learned in middle school or perhaps a physics topic you learned in high school, regardless of what grade you currently attend. It can be a very basic topic or a very complex topic, but we want to make sure students using it can collect, analyze, and learn from data based on the experiment(s) performed.

Prizes:
1st: Wolfram Award (Wolfram|One Professional 1 year $1,660) for each member, $10 Amazon gift card for each member, Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member, 1 *.xyz domain free for 1 year
2nd: $10 Amazon gift card for each member, Interview Cake $50 Full Access License for each member, 1 *.xyz domain free for 1 year

Best Industry Hack

2 winners

This category is for projects which provide a service or convenience specifically to professionals or customers within a specific industry. This can be any industry, such as healthcare, education, finance, and more. However, the project cannot be too generic; it must specifically be made to be used as a tool or service with real-world applications in the chosen industry.

Public Choice

1 winner

After submissions, all registrants on Devpost will be able to choose their favorite project, and that project will be eligible for prizes. See the schedule for timing details.

Prizes: $25 Art Of Problem Solving coupon for each team member

Giveaways & Pending Prizes

1 winner

We are still waiting on confirmation for how to distribute certain prizes, and we are planning to give away other prizes during the in-person event! Stay tuned for more details.