Students across majors and universities will participate in LFGhacks 2019, the inaugural FinTech hackathon hosted at Lehigh by Lehigh FinTech Group (LFG).
The hackathon is the largest business competition ever to be held at the university, according to LFG’s website. The event is expected to attract about 250 participants from more than 10 universities, including students from Lehigh, New York University, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.
“We think having an event at this scale that Lehigh can call its own is really cool,” said LFG co-president Cyrus Johannes ’20. “It is exciting because we are an elite university and this is an elite event for the school.”
The 36-hour event will start at 4 p.m. Friday, March 22, and end at noon Sunday, March 24 in Building C at Mountaintop Campus. The hackathon will kick off with a keynote presentation and presentations from the event sponsor Citi Ventures. Saturday events will consist of optional workshops, and participants will be able to work either at Building C or somewhere else on campus. Judging of presentations will take place on Sunday where winning teams will be awarded more than $12,000 in prizes.
Although there have been hackathons held at Lehigh over the years, they have been computer science competitions that required some level of coding background. For the LFGHacks, participants do not need programming experience, and it is open to all majors. One student on each team assembled on the first day must know how to code. Teams will consist of two to four students.
“It’s a FinTech hackathon. It’s not your typical coding-oriented hackathon,” Johannes said. “This is really a space for engineering students, business students, really students of all majors, to come together and think about problems within the financial world, think of creative solutions to them.”
Read the full story in the Lehigh University News Center
Story by Madison Hoff