Student has a knack for hackathons

Ohio State computer science and engineering major Ishmeet Grewal and his teammates were more than just good in JPMorgan Chase’s Code for Good Challenge held in Columbus, October 10-11. The five-student squad bested 11 other teams in the annual hackathon that benefits local and global change-making organizations from the surrounding communities.

Ishmeet is a junior majoring in computer science and engineering (CSE) from Youngstown, Ohio. His Code for Good teammates included fellow Ohio State CSE junior Matt Kujawinski, Shobhit Dalal of University of Texas-Dallas, Kim Farinacci of Miami University and Ibrahim Urooj Saeed of Ohio Wesleyan.

Nearly 70 students at the competition—some from as far away as San Diego—were divided into teams and given about 24 hours to build and present creative technological solutions for one of two nonprofits: American Red Cross and National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Ishmeet’s team chose NWF, which wanted an online community where new members could learn from veteran members on how to create a wildlife-friendly garden.

The team’s idea combined a blog with a question-and-answer forum—like Stack Overflow or Reddit—to allow inexperienced gardeners to access knowledge and help from experienced gardeners.

Ishmeet said their mentor Michael Thornton, JPMorgan Chase’s mobile applications technology director, gave them great advice. “He told us to not worry about the technology as much as the idea, the solution itself, because the organization will likely change the technology platform.”

So the teammates spent most of their time brainstorming the concept and designing the user interface based on demo data, instead of taking time to set up databases. The JavaScript skills Ishmeet picked up a week earlier during Ohio State’s hackathon, OHI/O, proved helpful in building the app.

Their demonstration to the judges was flawless, partly because they didn’t have to address backend technical issues. They focused on the concept and how it addressed NWF’s needs.

For winning the competition, the team members received iPad Air tablets. Ishmeet and Matt also received and accepted summer internships from JPMorgan Chase.

Inspired by OHI/O and Code for Good, Ishmeet looked for other hackathons.

In mid-November, he and Ohio State CSE student Peter Ferguson captured runner-up honors at the Cardinal Health/Fuse Patient Healthcare at Home Hackathon (video: http://youtu.be/4N57quU3kFo). The winning team also included a Buckeye engineer, CSE major Ariane Krumel, as well as Ohio State computer and information science student John Feerick.

Ishmeet and Peter’s concept, Health Dash, was an application programmable interface (API) that collects, connects and displays data from a variety of in-home and wearable devices and apps.

“Even if you don’t win, you still learn so much at hackathons,” Ishmeet said.

“You’re working with other people and the environment is so conducive to making things. It’s just a great way to spend a weekend.”

The 2015 OHI/O hackathon will be held on campus November 14-15. It's safe to say Ishmeet has plans that weekend.