Student-organized hackathon to welcome participants from across the Maritimes, alumni from Google, Dell EMC, and RideCo as guest judges

SACKVILLE, NB — The second annual MtAHacks computer science conference and hackathon will take place at Mount Allison University February 8-9, 2020. The two-day event is open to university, college, or high school students with programming skills of all levels.

Rija Ali, a fourth-year honours student is this year’s MtAHacks President, leading a team of 12 student organizers for the event. Ali helped organize last year’s inaugural competition and says the committee is excited to welcome students from across the Maritimes to campus for two days full of hacking and sharing ideas.

“We’ve got a great line-up planned for students and workshop leaders,” says Ali, who is pursuing a double major in math and computer science. “We’re also pleased to welcome representatives from the local industry and competition judges to share their knowledge and experience at the event.”

This year’s theme is Games and Education. Teams can brainstorm, build, and pitch projects throughout the day. Projects will be judged by a guest panel of Mount Allison alumni including Micah Stairs (Google); Olivier Bourgeois (Dell EMC); and 2019 graduate Anneke van derLaan, who works with Sonraí Security, a cloud security company based in Fredericton.

“Our conference is open to all students, regardless of their field of study or skill level,” says Ali. “Teams can really work in any way they like, whether it’s designing an app, software, programs, the conference is wide-open. While participants are expected to have some knowledge of at least one programming language; we encourage any students who are interested to get in touch about participating in the event.”

Participants may register as a team or individually at mtahacks.ca. Early bird registration ends Friday, January 17. Registration is free and complementary residence rooms are available for high school students only for the Friday night. See mtahacks.ca for registration details and a complete event schedule.

The conference is supported in part by Pravega, innovacorp, RBC Future Launch, #RisingYouth Community Service Grants, Mount Allison’s Campbell-Verduyn Fund, panchroma, and CBCL.