HackKU25 has ended! Stay tuned for details on HackKU26!
đź•’ Central
| Friday, April 4 | Saturday, April 5 | Sunday, April 6 | |
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| 7:00 pm | Dinner 7:00 - 8:00pm Burns & McDonnell Student Lounge La Estrella | ||
| 8:00 pm | Opening Ceremony 8:00 - 9:00pm Budig Hall 120 Auditorium Get to know everything you need to know before you start hacking! Shower Available 8:00 - 9:00pm Ambler Rec Center | Bob Ross Painting 8:00 - 9:00pm LEEP2 G411 Take a break and paint some happy trees with MLH and Bob Ross | |
| 9:00 pm | Patient Safety Tech Workshop 9:15 - 10:15pm LEEP2 G411 Interested in going for the consumer-driven patient safety tech prize of but want to know more about the problem that kills more than 200,000 Americans each year and harms millions? Join Peggy Zuckerman who is a patient advocate passionate about improving patient safety through technology and making consumers more actively engaged in their safety. she will give you a crash course on patient safety and what we're looking for teams to hack on this weekend! Find a Team 9:00 - 9:30pm Budig 120 Auditorium Niantic Workshop 9:15 - 10:15pm LEEP2 G415 Want to know how to rock the Niantic Track? This hands-on workshop about WebXR and Niantic Studio will shows you how to create immersive AR experiences right in your browser with no app store, no limits. Let’s make the web magical! | Devpost & Pitching Workshop 9:00 - 10:00pm LEEP2 G415 Speakers Suhaan Syed & Tejaswi Nimmagadda. Got a cool project but not sure how to present it? This workshop breaks down the basics of pitching at a hackathon! Learn how to write a solid Devpost, introduce your project with impact, and demo your tech like a pro. We'll walk through a real example from a past hackathon, and wrap up with a mini practice session where you can try your pitch and get live feedback. Whether it's your first hack or your fifth, you'll leave feeling more confident and pitch-ready! | |
| 10:00 pm | Intro to AI/ML 10:15 - 11:15pm LEEP2 G411 Speaker Daniel Johnson: Ever wondered how to sprinkle some machine learning magic into your project? This workshop covers the bare basics of using ML and ML-adjacent libraries like sklearn, numpy, pandas, and matplotlib. We’ll go through data processing, model training, validation, and even run a tiny project with a model we train together. Plus, we’ll toss in a crumb of math so you leave knowing what’s actually going on under the hood. Intro to Rust 10:15 - 11:15pm LEEP2 G415 Speaker Evan Almloff: Rust has become an increasingly popular choice for safe performance critical software like operating systems and servers. Learn the basics of Rust in this workshop along with concepts like lifetimes, traits, and structures! | ||
| 11:00 pm | Late Night Snack 11:00pm - 12:00am Burns & McDonnell Student Lounge Eileens Colossal Cookies provided by KU Business School MBA/MS Programs | Late Night Snack 11:15pm - 12:00am Burns & McDonnell Student Lounge Bubble Box Boba Tea | |
| 12:00 am | Nintendo Switch Tournament 12:00 - 1:00am LEEP2 G415 Super Smash Bros Switch tournament! | Midnight Karaoke 12:00 - 1:00am Eaton 2 Karaoke! | |
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Devpost Submission Deadline 7:30 - 8:00am http://devpost.com/ | |||
| 8:00 am | Breakfast 8:00 - 9:00am Burns & McDonnell Student Lounge McClains Final Submission Deadline 8:00 - 8:30am Online T-Shirt Pickup 8:00 - 9:00am Atrium | ||
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Breakfast 9:30 - 10:30am Burns & McDonnell Student Lounge Wheatfields Bakery | Demo 9:30 - 11:30am LEEP2 2300 Demo you project you've been hard at work at! | ||
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GitHub CoPilot Workshop 10:30 - 11:00am LEEP2 G411 | |||
| 11:00 am | Deep Learning 11:00am - 12:00pm LEEP2 G415 Speaker Faith Hedges: Ever wanted to build your own AI-powered game agent? In this workshop, we’ll walk through training an agent to beat Mario levels using reinforcement learning (yes, it’s as cool as it sounds). You’ll see it in action and can even follow along if you’re feeling brave. We’ll also showcase a hardcore Minecraft agent trained that is a lot more hardcore and took 10 hours at at time to train. Bonus: try giving it commands yourself! We’ll sprinkle in some data science and industry insights too for the curious. | ||
Project Showcase 11:30am - 12:30pm LEEP2 2300 Come check out what hackers have built all weekend at the HackKU 2025 Project Showcase! From first-time coders to seasoned devs, this is your chance to see the creativity, innovation, and hustle that went into every project. Swing by to demo your project, support your peers, and get inspired! | |||
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Lunch 12:30 - 2:00pm Burns & McDonnell Student Lounge Red Pepper | |||
| 1:00 pm | Awards Ceremony 1:00 - 1:30pm Eaton 2 | ||
| 2:00 pm | Clean Up 2:00 - 4:00pm Everywhere Everything | Exploring Hardware Designs 2:00 - 3:00pm LEEP2 G415 Speakers David Levy & Lily Bray: Dive into the world of hardware design with KU IEEE! In the process of learning how to build a 555 timer from scratch, gain inspiration from past IEEE projects and the process that was went through in designing them. All levels of knowledge are welcome. APIs Workshop 2:00 - 3:00pm LEEP2 G411 Speakers Dylan Kneidel & Dellie Wright: Help us work with APIs to code a Discord bot! We’ll show you how many APIs like ChatGPT and Discord communicate, and create our very own API in Python for you to interact with our bot live! | |
| 3:00 pm | CTF (CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER!!) 3:00 - 4:00pm CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER Squid Game HackKU Version 3:00 - 4:00pm LEEP2 Atrium Join us for a fun, fast-paced series of mini-games inspired by classic Korean childhood games with a competitive twist! You’ll face off in challenges like Marbles, Ddakji, Flying Stone, and Gong-gi, testing your luck, skill, and reflexes. No eliminations here, just good vibes, friendly competition, and a shot at some awesome prizes. Come for the games, stay for the chaos (and snacks)! 🎉 Shower Available 3:00 - 5:00pm Ambler Rec Center | ||
| 4:00 pm | Life as a HackKU Organizer 4:00 - 5:00pm LEEP2 G415 Are you curious about what it's like to organize a hackathon? Or are you interested in making the next HackKU even better? Come hang out with the HackKU25 organizers to learn more! | ||
| 5:00 pm | Sponsor Fair 5:00 - 7:30pm Atrium Meet with industry professionals and recruiters to learn more about their companies and technology! Hackathon Check-In 5:00 - 7:30pm LEEP2 Ground Floor Come swing by to grab your badge, swag, and officially kick off your hackathon weekend! | KURO: Arduino 101 5:00 - 6:00pm LEEP2 G411 Speaker Ian Kim: Join KURO and use the power of Arduino to learn how to assemble and program your very own digital Etch-a-Sketch using simple, off-the-shelf components! Whether you're new to hardware or a seasoned tinkerer, this hands-on workshop will walk you through the build and the code step-by-step. ⚠️ Heads up: Please bring a laptop with the Arduino IDE installed. Advanced users can use VS Code with the PlatformIO extension if preferred TechTogether Meetup 5:00 - 6:00pm LEEP2 G415 Hosted by Katie Swann: Join us for a cozy TechTogether MeetUp - a safe space to collaborate, chat, and support diversity in the hackathon community. Come hang out with Major League Hacking and rep your vibes with some cute lil scrunchies! Whether you’re here to make friends, find teammates, or just vibe, everyone’s welcome 💫 | |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner 6:00 - 7:30pm Burns & McDonnell Student Lounge Globe Indian provided by PayIt | AI Ethics Talk 6:00 - 7:00pm LEEP2 G415 What Should Machines Think About? 🤖🧠I saw an ad today for an “AI-powered” vacuum cleaner. It’s clear to us computer scientists that artificial intelligence is the shiny new car on the lot. But behind the hype and impressive tech are real questions about privacy, bias, accountability, and the role of humans in an increasingly automated world. Come explore what AI is, how it was trained, and why it matters how we use it. Whether you're applying machine learning in class, at work, or just curious where all this is headed, this session is for you. Let’s talk about what machines should actually be thinking about. | |
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