Latent AI Gives Back at SBHS Hackathon

Latent AI was the proud sponsor of this year’s South Brunswick High School (SBHS) Hackathon recently held in Princeton, NJ. We sponsored this local event to promote interest in high-tech careers and offer the chance for the next generation of developers and scientists to interact and question professionals who have had industry success. The SBHS Hackathon brought students together to experiment with new technology and meet new people. Some of Latent AI’s machine learning (ML) scientists and developers were invited alongside young SBHS alumni to participate in a Q&A panel and judging. Over 100 students participated in this year’s all-day event, which has been an SBHS tradition for around 10 years. As Steven Schiff, SBHS Computer Science Chair describes, “creating something new is really exciting, and this event really encourages students to work as a team to build a project that they are passionate about. It’s really about having fun and being excited about computer science.“

During an afternoon Q&A panel with SBHS Computer Science club student officers and teachers, Latent AI’s research scientist Dr. Koray Ozcan, software development interns Shaurya Gunderia (also SBHS alumnus) and Sailesh Rajagopolan provided background about what they do, the technologies they use, and how they reached this point in their careers, while students had the opportunity to ask questions about how to start a career in technology. Koray notes, ‘’It was fascinating to hear advanced level questions that reflect high school students’ curiosity and enthusiasm. We were asked how to optimize ML models and applications, state-of-the-art technologies that are utilized on the edge including the Internet of Things (IoT), and how to get started with model and application development when it comes to AI. They were all trying to make informed decisions about college majors that best suit their background and interests.” Later in the evening, Koray and Latent AI intern Maitreya Patel judged two of the categories: AI and command (CMD) line applications. The winning team in the AI category had implemented a heart disease predictive model that relied on logistic regression that could predict cardiac issues in just 12 hours, while the winning team in CMD had implemented a Wordle game via command line execution.

SBHS’s goal for future Hackathons is to expand the event and work together with other schools. Latent AI looks forward to participating in upcoming events with our local schools and community. While SBHS students and teachers showed enthusiasm in learning about our work, it was also motivation for us to see such young, driven, and talented students interested in the fields of Computer Science and Engineering, ML, and AI, as well as a school that is making an incredible effort to support educational programs in these advanced technologies.

Latent AI enables creation of more robust, efficient, and agile edge applications that improve user adoption and mission impact. Our current product mission is simplifying and accelerating traditional AI workflows from model training and optimization to deployment and support. Find out more about Latent AI at Latent AI – Adaptive AI for the Intelligent Edge.