>Puerto Rico Hackathon
I've learned a lot since I started attending hackathons with the club - applying computer science to help solve real-world issues is something not many get the opportunity to do it high school! In the fall of 2017, after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, thousands of people were without food or shelter. We decided to go to a hackathon and try to come up with a solution to solve the problem.
When we first arrived, our group brainstormed different ideas to solve the many issues the Puerto Ricans faced. We decided to create a website in which radio transcripts would be stored in a secure server. Puerto Ricans could walk to nearby cell towers to access these broadcasts, which would include locations for shelters and act as a communication device let people know of their situation. The user would create requests using a Natural Language Question Answer API. After long hours of work, we presented our idea in a prepared speech. We ended up winning the best machine learning hack award! I was $40 richer.