What is BostonHacks?

BostonHacks is a 24-hour event where students from different backgrounds gather together to use technology to create cool projects. Come to BostonHacks to expand your knowledge and skills, make new friends, win prizes, and network with our corporate sponsors!

Head to our website to apply or get important information on the theme, tracks, frequenty asked questions, and the schedule!

Questions? Reach out to [email protected]!

This year's theme... Retro Remix

Tracks:

Upgrade.exe

Protecting N00bs

Since 2007, the amount of data in the world has increased by 2200%, but our ability to protect that data has lagged behind. As technology has become integral to modern life, many people find themselves needing to create new accounts, download new applications, and send important information without the cybersecurity knowledge to keep their devices and data safe.

With all these cybersecurity threats, how can you help people and enterprises secure their data and devices in a user-friendly, accessible way?

Make Fetch Happen

Billions of websites, millions of applications, new products being launched every day... but no one seems to be adding that magic mix of features that you’ve been looking for. Think you know better than the rest? Today’s the day to turn those crazy ideas into reality, building from scratch or merging different products together to create your very own concept. 

Add new features to your favorite product, apply an existing feature in a novel way, or burn it all to the ground and create something completely different from anything we’ve seen before. The world is your oyster, push those boundaries and Make Fetch Happen.

Subtracks:

One subtrack can be chosen alongside one main track.

Capital One Best Financial Hack Subtrack

Back when the world was bracing for Y2K, Capital One was already thinking ahead, not about broken clocks, but about the future of banking. Fast forward 25 years, and we’ve evolved from targeted data-analytic beginnings to cloud-powered innovation. We recognized early that the winners in banking would be tech companies with the precision and risk management of leading banks. Our journey took us from mainframes to the cloud, from dial-up to real-time data streaming, and from “press 1 for service” to AI-driven customer experiences. Today, we’re building the bank of the future. This year’s track, The Best Financial Hack, is your chance to reimagine fintech for a new era. Whether you’re designing a new payment solution, reinventing how people budget, or bringing financial literacy into the digital age, we want to see your boldest, most creative ideas. To drive your innovative insights, feel free to explore the Capital One Hackathon API, Nessie, for real public-facing data. Projects will be judged on creativity, complexity, and completeness, but most importantly, on how they bridge the past and the future of finance.So dust off your old floppy disks, plug into the cloud, and show us how you’d make banking revolutionary.

MakerMods Subtrack

What if programming a robot was as simple as having a conversation? Instead of lines of code, imagine saying: “move the slider 20 cm forward” and watching your bot instantly respond.

With the rise of AI and large language models, building intelligent systems no longer requires years of coding experience. This track challenges you to explore how natural language can make complex interactions simple, intuitive, and human.

Use AI and LLMs to create tools, systems, or experiences that understand language, simplify complexity, and unlock new ways for people to express themselves or get things done.

The winner will be chosen based on the best use of AI and LLMs.

Sargent Therapy Rewind Subtrack

Reimagine classic assessment, treatment, and education tools from occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech-language, pathology, nutrition, or health sciences for the modern age. Take time-tested approaches that clinicians and educators still rely on - functional assessments, therapeutic activities, patient education, compliance tracking - and transform them using AI, computer vision, gamification, wearable sensors, telehealth, and personalized algorithms.

Challenge Areas:
Choose one area to focus your project:

Ocupational Therapy: Modernize tools and approaches for activities of daily living (ADL) assessment, sensory integration, fine motor skills, congnitive rehabilitation, adaptive equipment training, mental health or pediatric/geriatric interventions.

Physical Therapy: Reimagine tools for range of motion assessment, strength testing, gait analysis, balance training, home exercise programs, pain management, or functional mobility training. 

Speach-Language Pathology: Upgrade approaches for articulation therapy, language intervention, fluency treatment, voice therapy, swallowing assessment, aphasia rehabilitation, or augmentative and alternative communication (AAC).

Nutrition & Dietetics: Tranform tools for meal planning, nutritional assessment, dietary tracking, portion education, nutrition counseling, medical nutrition therapy, or public health nutrition education. 

Human Physiology & Health Sciences: Enhance tools for vital signs monitoring, exercise physiology assessment, patient education, health behavior tracking, chronic disease management, or physiological simulations.

Spark! Hack Our Space Subtrack

BU Spark! is looking for projects that hack our space — transforming everyday features into opportunities for surprise, delight, and playful interaction.We want to see hacks that draw people in and spark curiosity: an entrance that pulls visitors into the lab, seats that react when someone sits, walkways that come alive with sound or light, candy dispensers that surprise and reward, plants that sing when touched, or even our nerf basketball hoop turned into an interactive installation.

The winning project will stand out for its creativity, technical execution, and its ability to make the Spark! Lab feel more alive — turning ordinary objects into whimsical moments. We are especially interested in projects that foster interaction between people in the space.

The Winning Team will win $500 in Amazon gift cards and automatic acceptance into the   Spark! Innovation Program Spring Semester cohort (for teams with 2+ BU Students). 

Examples of project ideas include but are NOT limited to: 

Chair Symphony - A pressure sensor under a chair seat plays a short melody or sound effect when someone sits down.

Approach Detector - LiDAR or Kinect or PIR sensors detect someone approaching and trigger ambient sounds (e.g., projected footsteps, whispers, or sci-fi tones).

Room Mood Visualizer - A camera counts people entering a space and adjusts ambient lighting color/brightness and background music dynamically based on the facial emotion detected.

Heartbeat-to-Music - A pulse sensor reads a user’s heartbeat and maps it to drumbeats or basslines projected in real-time.

Personalized Entry Sound - RFID tags on student ID cards trigger different sound effects or themes when scanned at the door.

Smile-Activated Candy Dispenser - A vision model detects when someone smiles at a kiosk and dispenses candy.

Smart Hoop - a creative hack to our nerf basketball hoop - from a musical swish, to a pre-recorded cheers or trash talking, AI referee, and more! 

Equipment you’ll likely need: Microcontrollers & Computers (Arduinos and Raspberry Pis), Sensors (motion, pulse, etc.) RFID tags and readers, Audio components, cameras, and more

• Novelty
  Innovation and creativity - How new or unique the project is - Does it create novel additions to existing projects?
• Impact
  Impact to society or the hacking/engineering community. - How much does the project disrupt or change current norms within the demographic it's meant for?
• Nuance
  Technical Complexity - How much knowledge is required for the project? - How technical is the architecture and how much does it add to the value of the project?
• Relevance
  Relevance to the track and/or subtrack - How related to the track description is the project? - Does it take the track and extends beyond it?
• Polish
  Usability and/or UI polish - Is the project fully working with an intuitive interface, consistency, and reliability? - Can someone new to the project instantly start using and gaining value from the project?
• Presentation
  - How much understanding and comprehension of the project is shown in the presentation to the judges? - Was there proper reasoning for engineering choices? - Does the presentation showcase all other criteria in a clear manner?
• General Impact