Student Hackathon in San Rafael Draws Inspired Bay Area Young People

MARIN COUNTY, CA – Students from across the Bay Area participated in a "hackathon" event Saturday in San Rafael.

The sold-out Hack4Health event at the Marin County Office of Education brought 80 students together to brainstorm solutions to problems they see in their communities based on data provided by the county. The event was also a major public roll-out for a new online statistical database called Marin County Open Data.

A hackathon is a gathering of computer programmers and others who work on creating innovative software solutions in a short period of time. At Saturday's event, students delved into data for opioid use, food facility
inspections, obesity and emergency medical services.

Participants included middle school, high school and college students from throughout the region.

Five prizes were awarded to student hackers.

The first place prize, worth $2,000, went to Anish Singhani of Monte Vista High School in Danville for "Best Solution Supporting a Healthier Community."

Singhani's idea was a mobile app that predicts where illness outbreaks might occur based on health hazards such as illegal dumping, stagnant water or unsanitary food facilities.

Second Place, “Best Mobile App” ($1,000): Kavi Dolasia, Tamalpais High School; Saar Lipshitz, Del Mar Middle School; Baraq Lipshitz, Del Mar Middle School. The ChewIQ health app is targeted at teens and kids to promote a healthy lifestyle through information about exercise and nutrition.

Third Place, “Best Use of Marin’s Open Data” ($500): Leonid Karashanoff, Sebastian Boyd, Duncan Grubbs, Max Oliver Starr, all of Sir Francis Drake High School. Optimizing Ambulance Response Times visualizes data from each ZIP code and plots ambulance location information to relocate them to areas most in demand.

Fourth Place, “Best Storytelling with Marin’s Open Data” ($500): Peter Sakai, Gate Academy, and Brandon Sakai, Redwood High School. Kindergarten Immunization Rates vs. Herd Immunity takes a look at whether school communities are protected by herd immunity. If a child can’t get a vaccination, the tools helps a parent find which schools would be best suited for them.

HHS Award – Kentaro Cookhorn, Del Mar Middle School; Rahman Owens, Mill Valley Middle School; Melina Johnston, St. Francis Solano School; and Nate Cohen, Del Mar Middle School, all part of the CoderDojo group sponsored by the Belvedere-Tiburon Library. Ready Laser gamifies exercise by allowing the user to gain points by exercising. It compares players on a leaderboard and allows for social exercise gatherings through laser tag. “Exercise apps are boring for teens, and we want to make exercise appealing for gamers and teens,” the coders wrote.

The winning projects used one or more of the datasets from Marin County Open Data, which was launched three months ago. The database is meant to improve government transparency and to invite the community to use the data.

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--Bay City News contributed to this report/Image via Marin County