Wilton Teen on Winning St. Luke's Hackathon Team

Forty-seven students answered the recent call to create at St. Luke’s 5th Annual Hackathon. Wilton resident and St. Luke’s student Liam Patty '21 was on a winning Upper School division team.

Leading the charge at the Hackathon was St. Luke’s designLab Director Michael Mitchell. The designLab is part of St. Luke’s Center for Leadership and its motto is Make it Better. The annual Hackathon brings that motto to life by inviting students to think up design and prototype solutions to life’s most interesting problems.

Solve a Transportation Problem for Your Community
This year’s Hackathon challenge was to solve a transportation problem. This same challenge inspired the launch of Hackathon sponsor Mustard transportation. In the words of Mustard’s founder Alberto Escarlate: “Parents are crazy busy and need help getting kids to and from school and activities. Mustard came up with the idea of tech-enabled vans that allow parents to schedule and track their child’s transportation efficiently and surprise-free.”

Students responded with transportation solutions that included computer-optimized school pickup lines, a snowplow bicycle, an app that finds the best path to your classes and a soda-retrieving robot. See the hackers at work: St. Luke’s 2019 Hackathon photo galleries.

Failure is Part of Creation
David Pakman, an Internet Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist at Venrock, is a St. Luke’s parent and trustee. Pakman helped inspire the first St. Luke’s Hackathon and continues to participate with his family every year: “The fundamental idea of the Hackathon is that you come with an idea and have this focused time to figure it out. And a lot of times you can’t. You have to learn to use tools, you have to think linearly to solve a problem, you have to stumble through challenges, hit a brick wall and move around it. These are all part of the design and building process for any product. So these are valuable product development skills. And failure is part of creation. So the fact that we emphasize learning as more important than completion of your product, your hack, I think we’re teaching kids something valuable, part of the real world.”

It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature
When bad weather turned the planned 30-hour Hackathon into a condensed 10-hour event, participants had to adapt quickly. Michael Mitchell modeled perfect hacker-mentality by going with the flow: “The weather was out of our control, but we chose to see our shortened time frame as a challenge. There’s a popular programming expression, It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s tongue-in-cheek but also a great response to a setback—ask, how do we make this a positive?”

According to Mitchell, the limited time did not detract from the students’ ability to create: “The students were highly focused and once again impressed us with the development of their prototypes.”

And Now, the Winning Hacks…
Students presented their ideas, demonstrated their prototypes, and received feedback from guest mentors and judges. The winning hacks were:

Upper School
1st: Raspberry Pi License Plate Detection System
Connor Rosow ‘20 (Southport), Jamie Ullman ‘20 (New Canaan), Henry Jodka ‘20 (New Canaan), Marco Volpitta ‘20 (Pound Ridge)

2nd: Robotic Hand
Jack Briggs ‘21 (Darien) & Liam Patty ‘21 (Wilton)

3rd: Eye Tracking
Sam Pakman ‘22 (New Canaan)

Middle School
1st: Smart Luggage Tag
Jack Silverman ‘23 (Westport)

2nd: Drone Parachute Delivery
Bradford Cooper ‘24 (Pound Ridge), Jack Chuhta ‘25 (Stratford), William Warren ‘24 (Pound Ridge)

3rd: Regenerative Train Braking
Chris Briggs ‘24 (Darien), Andrew LaPadula ‘24 (Greenwich)

St. Luke’s Hackathon 2019 Mentors & Judges:
Special guests: Harry Amadeo (Prospector Theater), Alberto Escarlate (Mustard), Craig Lambert (Mustard), Mark Mathias (Westport MakerFaire), Jim Paris (Bolt), Ryan Wenke (Prospector Theater)

St. Luke’s alumni: Logan Diliberto ‘18 (Drexel), Tyler Klein ‘15 (Tufts), Bilal Memon ‘18 (Brown), and Andrew Sudano ‘13 (Boeing)

St. Luke’s faculty: Matt Bavone (Academic Technologist), Zach Brusko (Computer Science teacher), Kimberly Gerardi (designLab)

Photo #1: Liam Patty (Wilton) and Jack Briggs (Darien) working on their robotic hand hack

Photo #2: St. Luke's Hackathon 2019 Upper School winners: Jack Briggs ‘21 (Darien), Liam Patty ‘21 (Wilton), Sam Pakman ‘22 (New Canaan), Henry Jodka ‘20 (New Canaan), Connor Rosow ‘20 (Southport), Marco Volpitta ‘20 (Pound Ridge) and Jamie Ullman ‘20 (New Canaan)

Photo #3: St. Luke's Hackathon 2019 participants

St. Luke's is a secular private school in New Canaan, CT for grades 5-12. St. Luke's mission is an exceptional education that inspires a deep love of learning, a strong moral compass, the commitment to serve, and the confidence to lead. St. Luke's Center for Leadership advances our mission by helping students develop exceptional leadership ability. Visit today.