About the challenge
SteelHacks is a weekend-long event where students from around the nation work together to build innovative technology products. For over a decade, SteelHacks has been the center of innovation and builder culture for 3000+ talented students. This year, SteelHacks will take place September 19-20. Participants will have the opportunity to dream, design, and deliver technology products from scratch. In addition, we will offer mini-games, mentorship, and meals for students to take a break from coding.
Hosted by the Computer Science Club at Pitt in partnership with the School of Computing and Information.
Requirements
What to Submit
- Your project code in the form of a Github with detailed ReadMe, or an accessible Google Drive link if making something without code
- Team member information on your ReadMe (full name, email address)
- Demo video / pitch slides (in the form of a Google Drive, Canva, Figma, or PowerPoint link)
Prizes
[NVIDIA] Beyond the Chatbot
Each Winning Team:
4 Jetson Orin Nano Supers, 4 $50 Brev.dev Credit Vouchers, 4 NVIDIA Hats
[PNC] Compound
1st Place:
Each team member receives $250 in cash.
2nd Place:
Each team member receives 1 JBL Flip 5.
3rd Place:
Each team member receives 1 YETI Tumbler.
[LANXESS] Xtract
1st Place:
Each team member receives 1 pair of Sony WH-CH720N headphones.
2nd Place:
Each team member receives 1 ANKER power bank.
3rd Place:
Each team member receives 1 JBL Go 5.
[Pear VC and Afore Capital] Seed Round
1st Place:
Each team member receives $75 in cash and an interview or office-hours opportunity.
2nd Place:
Each team member receives a LEGO Flying Machine set and an interview/office-hours opportunity.
3rd Place:
Each team member receives API credits.
No Wrapper
1st Place:
Each team member receives 1 pair of AirPods 4. MLH Winner Pins
2nd Place:
Each team member receives 1 mechanical keyboard.
3rd Place:
Each team member receives 1 Owala water bottle.
Press Start
1st Place:
Each team member receives 1 Nintendo Switch Lite. MLH Winner Pins
2nd Place:
Each team member receives 1 LEGO Game Boy set.
3rd Place:
Each team member receives 1 Logitech G305 LIGHTSPEED mouse.
Cold Start
1st Place:
Each team member receives 1 iPad. MLH Winner Pins
2nd Place:
Each team member receives 1 mini projector.
3rd Place:
Each team member receives 1 Apple AirTag.
[ElevenLabs] Out Loud!
Every participant gets one month of ElevenLabs’ Creator tier free (normally $22/month, with 131k credits).
Each member of the team that wins the ElevenLabs track gets three months of the Scale tier (1.8M credits per month — an $897 value per person).
[MLH] Best Use of Presage
Fitbit Inspire & Presage Perks
Presage is pioneering the Human Sensing Layer, enabling any application to understand a person’s real-time physical and emotional state. With Presage, you can leverage clinically-proven vital signs, movement, emotion, and/or focus tracking to build a project that gives the standard camera super powers.
Use any of the Presage SDKs to integrate capabilities like real-time heart rate, breathing rate, engagement levels, and facial expressions into your hack with just a few lines of code.
Immersive Gaming & Entertainment: Dynamically change game difficulty or story elements based on a player's excitement or focus levels.
Contactless Wellness & Fitness: Build a non-invasive app that monitors stress, recovery, or fitness performance.
Accessibility & Security: Utilize vital signs for effortless authentication, or to enhance accessibility.
Productivity: Design a tool that tracks focus or stress.
Build your next hack with Presage and show us the future of human-computer interaction! Win awesome prizes along for with the following perks from the Presage team:
Free refills for Presage Development credits to accelerate you through your next three months of building
30% off all Presage usage charges for your first year after going live
[MLH] Best Use of Solana
Ledger Nano S Plus
The world of development is evolving fast and Solana is leading the charge with a network built to handle all of your infrastructure needs. Forget high fees and slow confirmations, it’s time to build applications that are fast, efficient, and scalable.
Harness Solana’s core advantages like blazing fast execution and near-zero transaction costs to make your hackathon ideas become real world projects. With Solana, the possibilities are endless.
Create a game, social app, or consumer product that relies on instant, high-frequency transactions.
Design a sophisticated trading, lending, or decentralized exchange (DEX).
Build a prototype for supply chain, identity, or payments that can handle massive, real-world volume.
Show us how you can innovate with Solana for a chance to win some cool prizes for you and each member of your team!
[MLH] Best Use of Snowflake API
Raspberry Pi 4
Play with industry-leading LLMs on a single account using the Snowflake APIs. Adding AI capabilities into your application can be as simple as a single CURL command to Snowflake’s REST API.
Build customized applications, RAG powered chat bots, or embed AI-powered features into your app in half the time with half the hassle. Get started for free with a special, student 120-day Snowflake trial and check out this repository for an example of the Snowflake REST API in action.
[MLH] Best Use of Tiger Data
Stream Deck Mini
Building high-performance apps under hackathon deadlines shouldn't mean spending half your weekend configuring complex databases or learning obscure query languages. Tiger Data extends PostgreSQL to give student developers an ultra-fast foundation for real-time data, time-series metrics, and complex analytics.
Why build with Tiger Data this weekend?
Standard SQL Power: Query massive datasets instantly using the SQL you already know, with no complex NoSQL aggregation pipelines required.
Unified Data Stack: Store relational user profiles and high-frequency metric streams side-by-side in a single database.
Instant Dashboards: Serve lag-free, real-time frontend charts using pre-computed Continuous Aggregates.
90%+ Data Compression: Store millions of events on free-tier cloud instances without running out of disk space.
Whether you’re building real-time IoT monitoring, AI-driven analytics dashboards, or financial prediction engines, show us how Tiger Data powers your project. The team that demonstrates the most innovative, impactful, and performance-driven use of Tiger Data will take home some great prizes!
[MLH] Best Use of ElevenLabs
Wireless Earbuds
Deploy natural, human-sounding audio with ElevenLabs. Create realistic, dynamic, and emotionally expressive voices for any project, from interactive AI companions to narrated stories and voice-enabled apps. ElevenLabs will empower you to build rich, immersive experiences without the need for actors or complex audio production, using simply the power of AI.
Integrate fully autonomous audio experiences into your hack with ElevenLabs and give your project a voice, along with giving your team the chance to win some wireless earbuds!
[MLH] Best Use of Gemini API
Google Swag Kits
It’s time to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI using Google Gemini. Check out the Gemini API to build AI-powered apps that make your friends say WHOA. So, what can Gemini do for your hackathon project?
Understand language like a human and build a chatbot that gives personalized advice
Analyze info like a supercomputer and create an app that summarizes complex research papers
Generate creative content like code, scripts, music, and more
Think of the possibilities… what will you build with the Google Gemini API this weekend?
[MLH] Best Use of DigitalOcean
Retro Wireless Mouse
DigitalOcean offers a reliable and easy-to-use cloud platform for every stage of your project. Leverage core services like Droplets, Managed Databases, and App Platform to build, deploy, and scale your application effortlessly. Building with AI? DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI enables you to build, train, and deploy machine learning models, including access to GPU infrastructure and serverless inference!
Sign up for DigitalOcean today and get $200 worth of free credits that you can use towards building your next great hack. Build with DigitalOcean’s robust cloud infrastructure for a chance to win some great prizes for you and each of your teammates!
[MLH] Best Use of .Tech
Desktop Microphone & a Free .Tech Domain Name for up to 10 years!
Make your Team’s Achievements timeless: Win a .Tech Domain Name for up to 10 years to Showcase and Expand Your Project, Plus Desktop Mics for Effortless Collaboration on Zoom, empowering you to build even more cool things together!
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges
Nij Patel
Head of Product @ Whim
Augustine Mucci
UPMC
Fred Schein
UPMC
Wonsun Ahn
Associate Professor
Brad Messner
Founder & Professor
Delaney Scheidell
AWS
Brayden Nguyen
Roblox
Akash Krishan
PNC
Jonathan Coulter
Microsoft
Jayden Kelly
Roblox
William Hill
Nvidia
Ethan Einhorn
Nvidia
Shreyash Ranjan
Nvidia
Menaka Kulkarni
Lanxess
Caden Milne
BNY
Aditya Paul
BNY
Denys Tsinyk
Character.AI
Liam Brem
Meta
Judging Criteria
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https://steelhacks.org/tracks
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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