Background
I had the pleasure to attend the Cyber/Crypto Hackathon at Bari Ilan University last week (24-25 of May) as a member of the team of mentors. This was the first time attending a hackathon as a mentor and I wanted to share some insights from this activity. The event was organized by the Center for Research in Applied Cryptography and Cyber Security of the Bar Ilan University. The students had to group into small 3-6 person teams and present a solution/research to an academic level research question.
Some Numbers
- 165 students signed-up, 110 accepted
- 86 arrived, 71 completed
- 21 groups signed-up, 14 completed
- Prizes:
- 1st – NIS12,500
- 2nd – NIS7,500
- 3rd - NIS2,500
- 24 mentors from 14 firms/org
Insights
I thought it was pretty amazing how much the groups of students were able to accomplish, without much knowledge of crypto or machine learning. I found myself having ad-hoc explanations on the basics of machine learning and usage of the right python packages to do so.
all in all, I think that the groups did phenomenal work in a short amount of time, and I had a blast debating, encouraging, mentoring and helping them discover cyber issues and themes for their solutions.
would definitely participate again in the future!
Some Photos
