Morehouse Faculty College students Acquire High Prize, Profession Publicity At Black Enterprise’s HBCU Hackathon

The results are in!

The 6th annual BE Smart Hackathon, hosted by Black Enterprise and American Airlines, has come to an end, unveiling a number of award-winning teams representing the best tech talent from HBCUs in the country.

The Morehouse team, consisting of five students from Morehouse College in Atlanta, won first prize in the highly competitive final showdown. The free-fly travel app impressed the BE Smart jury, consisting of Earl “Butch” Graves, Jr., President and CEO of BLACK ENTERPRISE. Earl Barnes, President of Enterprise Infrastructure Services at American; Dr. Jerry Higgs, senior software and systems engineer, Etsy e-commerce marketplace; and Cornelius Boone, American Vice President for Human Resources and Team Member Services.

Each member of Team Morehouse will receive 100,000 AA Advantage Miles for their first place. They also won one of the event’s coveted partner awards, given by software intelligence company Dynatrace.

Also a strong performance at the event – produced under the theme “Tech Superheroes Unite!” In honor of Chadwick Boseman, the late actor and HBCU alum who played the title role in the blockbuster Black Panther, the runner-up winner was Kilmonger Avengers – an HBCU collaboration between Hampton University and Florida A&M brought their Quick Way project 75,000 AA Advantage Miles for each team member. The Kilmonger Avengers also received a special award from event partner Harman International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung.

Third place went to the Bowie State Cyber ​​Panthers for their impressive AA Baggage Protection 2.0 app. Two Morgan State teams followed, finishing fourth and fifth, respectively: Vibranium and the Jabari Bears. Because of their ability to develop innovative technology solutions, American decided to award 50,000 AA Advantage Miles to each member of the three remaining finalist teams.

The 2020 BE Smart Hackathon was notable in many ways. For one, it was run as a virtual competition for the first time – a decision made necessary due to the global pandemic. “Despite COVID-19 and other challenges, BE Smart hosted 25 HBCUs with more than 40 teams and over 200 HBCU students,” says Graves.

Phillip Easter, the US chief technology officer who led the airline’s collaboration with BE, names another development that he believes will impact tech: around 40% of student competitors were women.

The BE Smart Hack provides HBCU students with a valued platform for obtaining internship and employment opportunities. In fact, Graves praised the title sponsor for its track record of expanding the diversity mindset and launching careers for HBCU talent. “Last year American hired 10 HBCU graduates to participate in the 2019 Hackathon. Despite the pandemic, they did their job well. “The aviation company also recruited four more HBCU graduates from other events it attended last year and had such recruitment activities prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Graves also paid tribute to the event’s corporate partners for doing everything they can to make the event a success. In addition to Dynatrace and Harman, partner companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Mastercard, Slack and Hewlett Packard awarded a number of special prizes to teams with students from Fisk University, Florida Memorial, Tuskegee University and Howard University.

During the event, Easter encouraged corporate partners to hire hack attendees. One such subsidiary, Nvidia, the multinational that develops graphics processors for the gaming and professional markets, gave Storm AI, a team of students from Fisk and Florida Memorial, a paid trip to Silicon Valley headquarters to meet top executives to meet . Storm AI’s Yunior Garcia won two partner awards and gave an enthusiastic look back at the event, shared by numerous other attendees: “It was more than anything I could have imagined. My teammates and I are only thrilled with the prices, but above all with the experiences we have made from a collaboration that only started last Friday at 12 noon. “

Graves presented the hack’s final honor – the Black Enterprise Design and Collaboration Award – to an all-female team from Prairie View A&M University, who competed in competitions during their halftime and attended all event workshops. The award was a collector’s item – a framed poster of the themed event artwork, signed by renowned comic illustrator Denys Cowan. That team was aptly named Dora Milaje, the Wakanda elite female special unit featured in the Black Panther film.

After greeting “all of the tech superheroes who took part in our hackathon”, Graves promised that “we’ll be back next year … bigger and better”.

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