PeddieHacks: How Students Pulled Off A 48-Hour Global Hackathon

By Aanya Tolat ’25

Picture this: You are given the opportunity to design and code a revolutionary music or travel app, competing to win $130,000 in prizes. The catch? You only have 48 hours to complete the project. What would you create?

The Peddie Computer Science Club’s annual hackathon, PeddieHacks, returned this past August for its fifth annual event,  filled with workshop speakers, gaming sessions and participants from all over the world. Running a 48-hour hackathon is not an easy job, and we had to start working from the very beginning of last school year. 

Our first task was to find sponsors to help us fund prizes for our winners. My role as a lead organizer was to ensure we could raise the most money possible, so I managed spreadsheets for us to track our emails to sponsors and funding, assigning companies for each team member to contact. Some of our sponsors contributed to merch for our team, like T-shirts and speakers with the PeddieHacks logo. Other contributions went directly to winners, like the generous donation from an alumnus from the Peddie Class of 1968. Starting the finance and marketing process right away was crucial because it continued throughout the year, with sponsors joining us until the last weeks of July. This year, we raised over $130,000 in prizes for our event, which helped attract more participants than ever before.

Our next feat was to start planning specific details for the event, such as the themes, workshop presenters and judging panel. We were fortunate enough to have numerous Peddie alumni and other contacts who were more than willing to offer their time as speakers, so our workshop slots filled up fast, and the same rang true for the judging panel. We are supported by many recurring judges and some recent alumni, so this is never a daunting task for us, especially after four years of the hackathon. Part of why I enjoy running events like this is because it enables me to learn from some amazing people, both in and out of the Peddie community. There are so many alumni with incredible stories, and these workshops and judging sessions help me learn more about them. 

After these details were all hashed out, we began work on the marketing side. This happened in various forms – through our website, Devpost page and Instagram, as well as emails to other schools and robotics teams throughout the area. We were fortunate to have some returning participants as well, eager to compete again after the success of PeddieHacks 2023. Thanks to all these resources, we reached over 320 participants to compete in the hackathon this year. 

Each step in the process — meetings with sponsors, discussions about logistics, and every email that was sent — was in preparation for the main event, which began on August 16. During the opening ceremony, we unveiled our big themes: music and travel. The themes were designed to make the projects entertaining to both our participants and judges, and looking back, this was quite successful. With that, the participants were off to their projects, and our task was to answer any questions they had throughout the weekend, going into shifts to ensure we had team members available at all times. Eric Huang ’25 recalled, “I stayed up to help with Q&A on Discord until 4 a.m. (EDT) to accommodate international participants — despite my lack of sleep, it was fulfilling to know that I could help answer last-minute questions and communicate with the participants.”

On the weekend of the event, we heard from the workshop presenters who were all from different backgrounds and readily shared their experiences and interests. One presentation came from Jason Puglisi, a PeddieHacks judge who discussed his experience winning DEF CON, a cybersecurity/vishing competition, and taught us just how many security issues there are with the digital world. Our second workshop speaker was Robin Giese ’98, who discussed his career experiences, going from Microsoft to a startup, and now his role at Meta. We were fortunate to have a talk from Alex Macdonald, founder of Velocity Black and successful entrepreneur, as our third workshop (thanks to Erin Wolfe and the Curve Club).

Another part of PeddieHacks is all the gaming sessions and participant interaction. We had incredible participants from all over the world — Malaysia, Canada, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden and many states throughout the U.S. The gaming sessions were a way for us to engage with these competitors outside of the formal judging process, and we played a variety of games like Skribbl.io and Among Us. 

On August 20, all of our planning was put to the test. Our participants submitted their projects, and our panel of judges needed to review them. These judges included a variety of Peddie alumni, like Winston Yang ’19, Elizabeth Hu ’21, Arjun Agrawal ’22, Karishma Gupta ’23, Bao To ’23, Pradyun Bachu ’24, Angad Singh ’24, Savir Singh ’24 and Tiger Li ’24. Once we received all the submissions, the PeddieHacks team prescreened and filtered all submissions, making sure only the projects that adhered to the themes progressed to the live judging round. Afterward, we worked alongside the judges to view the presentations and score the projects, ultimately helping decide the prize winners for the event. 

Several students competed in the event, from new students at Peddie to returning PeddieHacks winners. There were a total of 38 submissions and 7 winning projects (one team per prize). We had an all-Peddie team win the Innovation Prize this year — team Pee Pod: Yang (Philip) Han ’25, Alvin Kim ’26 and Che (Jayden) Li ’26. Jingyi Han ’26 also won the Judges’ Grand Prize with her team, Frog Eat Bug. The projects varied from games to help learners practice their instruments to full trip-planning websites to schedule flights and excursions. The participants enjoyed participating, improving their coding skills and having fun with friends. “PeddieHacks was an incredibly inspiring event,” shared Philip. “As returning competitors, we challenged ourselves with a significantly more ambitious project this year.” Teamwork and collaboration are part of the magic of PeddieHacks. As Alvin Kim shared, “I got to have fun coding with my friends. Debugging is usually a pain, but doing it with others makes it bearable.” 

It was amazing to see all the submissions people came up with and watch our work throughout the year pay off. Learning from all the judges and participants each year is incredibly rewarding, and we can adapt our event and club as we get feedback. The hackathon has been running since 2020 when it was founded by Elizabeth Hu ’21, and the iterations of PeddieHacks have allowed us to run the event successfully ever since. Organizing and managing this event each year has taught me about leadership, delegation and communication, as well as the dedication that goes into executing such a large-scale event. Sean Li ’25 (Logistics Team Lead) shared, “PeddieHacks was an amazing collaborative experience. I greatly enjoyed the deliberations we had as a team, such as coming up with the themes of music and travel. It felt amazing when these ideas came to fruition in the projects.”

Being able to bring PeddieHacks to an audience of all levels of programmers is incredibly rewarding. I love observing people’s sheer excitement when their code finally runs or their pride upon submitting their first-ever hackathon project, and it is fulfilling to know that I was able to help bring that experience to others. I am especially grateful to Peddie for readily promoting the event and giving us all the resources needed to organize such a successful event. The Technology, Alumni & Development, and Math Departments have been especially crucial for our event, as well as Mr. Corica for providing us with the list of potential speakers and Mrs. Wolfe for her constant support and mentorship of our club.

PeddieHacks Team

Executive/Leadership
Aanya Tolat ’25

Logistics & Finance/Marketing Team
Eliza Lamar ’25 (Finance/Marketing Lead)
Ananya Hari ’25 (Logistics Lead)
Sean Li ’25 (Logistics Lead)
Amanda Harmon ’25 (Finance/Marketing Lead)
Eric Huang ’25, Ethan Lee ’25, Leo Pan-Wang ’26, Olivia Timmermann ’27, Kasey Lee ’27, Leslie Han ’27

Website Team
Alvin Kim ’26 (webmaster), Cici Yang ’25 (artist)

Judges
Jason Puglisi, Jim Harris, Peter Wolfe, Joy Wolfe, Winston Yang ’19, Elizabeth Hu ’21, Arjun Agrawal ’22, Karishma Gupta ’23, Bao To ’23, Pradyun Bachu ’24, Angad Singh ’24, Savir Singh ’24, Tiger Li ’24