The 13-hour event, held from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., drew not only Korean American college students but also college and high school students from other ethnicities, indicating a strong interest in data science and AI. A total of 54 students formed 10 teams to generate ideas on the theme and showcased their efforts to contribute to the world using data.
“We have held similar events every year, but we were surprised to see the rapid development of Korean American students,” said Seonho Kim, associate director of the USC IMSC Institute, who organized the event. “We were impressed by the young Korean Americans’ novel ideas and their ability to implement technology.”
In particular, 24 undergraduate students from six universities (Soongsil University, Konkuk University, Kyonggi University, Kyungwoon University, Tongmyong University, and Wonkwang University) participated in the event through the SW Center University Project’s Software Pioneer Program (SPP). “It was a day to admire the performance of the students who produced results in a short period of time. I am very proud of them,” said Kim.
The first-place winner of the hackathon was the “Fingerprint Protection” system created by students Min-hee Lee, Seo-bin Lee, Jeong-eun Park, and Seung-hwan Jang. The system automatically blurs fingerprints on images to prevent them from being used in crimes.
Second place went to Yugyeong Ji, Hyeonji Park, Junseo Jung, and Yumin Shin, who developed a program to predict MBTI using posts on social media. Third place was awarded to Sean Kim and Elliott Yoo, who developed an analytics program to predict students’ likelihood of dropping out of school, and to Byungjun Kim, Yewon Hong, Donggun Lee, and Chunyoung Park, who developed an automatic sign language recognition program using artificial intelligence (AI).
The Honorable Mention award went to Jeremiah Chun, a student attending Korea Daily’s summer KD Python with DS Project camp, for his analysis of a loan approval prediction system. “I was able to learn how to analyze data and design programs in a short time with brothers and sisters who are in college. I would like to participate again next time,” said Chun.
Jangwon Kim (Applied Statistics Researcher, Amazon Care), Samuel Kim (Head of Advanced Research, Cypherom), and Wonkyum Lee (Software Engineer, Gridspace) served as judges. Jangwon Kim commented, “I was impressed by the students’ ability to bring great ideas to the world through hands-on problem-solving, despite the limitations of working on intensive projects with limited time.”
BY GYEONGEUN PARK [park.gyeongeun@koreadaily.com]
