Lehigh University recently hosted its third annual 24-hour hackathon, Lehigh Hacks for Justice, bringing together 42 students on the Mountaintop campus to develop technology-driven solutions for social justice issues.
Lehigh Hacks, a consortium of campus clubs—comprising the Association for Computing Machinery, Computer Science and Business Association, Lehigh Blockchain Club, Lehigh Cybersecurity Club, and Women in Computer Science—organized the event, which challenged participants to identify real-world problems and create functional applications to address them.
A panel of judges, including Google software engineers and Lehigh alums Emma Wald ’17 and Pete Matt ’04, and Rossin College computer science and engineering faculty members Roberto Palmieri and Houria Oudghiri, evaluated the projects, with winners recognized in five categories.
Among the standout projects was an AI-powered application designed to assist immigrants in navigating government documents, which won the Most Likely to Be Venture Capital Funded award. Another winning team developed “Bias Blocker,” a Google Chrome extension aimed at detecting biased news sources, while “EyeGuard,” an AI-driven tool for identifying violent incidents in security footage, earned the Best Technical Solution prize.
Event sponsors included the Rossin College, the Office of the Provost, and other university departments.
Read more about Lehigh Hacks for Justice in The Brown and White.
