About the challenge

Hack NMSU, organized by the Computer Science Student Association(CSSA) at NMSU, is an intensive 10-hour event designed to foster an inclusive and beginner-friendly environment for students of all majors to collaborate and innovate using AI. Taking place on the NMSU campus on April 10th, 2025, this hackathon challenges participants to build functional projects in a single day while competing for prizes and networking with local tech professional. The event focuses on four key themes:

Education and Learning Tools, Local Community Impact, Financial Tech, and an Open-Ended Theme for creative exploration

Requirements

What to Build

We invite you to build something meaningful. Choose from one of our core themes:

  • Education and Learning Tools: Create innovative education and learning tools.

  • Local Community Impact: Build solutions that directly benefit the community.

  • FinTech: Develop the next generation of financial technology.

  • Open-Ended: Have a unique idea? Build it here.

The AI Advantage: We are placing a strong emphasis on building with AI. We highly encourage you to leverage advanced AI tools to automate your workflow, accelerate your development, and bring your ideas to life faster.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$1,000 in prizes
1st place
$500 in cash
1 winner

2nd place
$300 in cash
1 winner

3rd place
$200 in cash
1 winner

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Rupak Dey

Rupak Dey

Dr. Hamilton

Dr. Hamilton

Judging Criteria

  • TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION (30 points)
    30: flawless, elegant, fully-featured 24: solid core, tiny bugs 17: basics work, big bugs 10: barely runs 4: broken
  • INNOVATION & CREATIVITY (25 points)
    25: mind-blowing, never seen 19: fresh twist 14: slight remix 9: generic 4: copy-paste
  • IMPACT & PRACTICALITY
    25: solves real pain, ready to ship 19: useful today 14: nice but rough 9: “why?” 4: useless
  • PRESENTATION & DEMO
    20: demo wows and presentation is great 16: clear, smooth 12: ok, some stumbles 8: confusing 4: crash & silence

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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