Hyderabad engineering students win HackHarvard 2024 award

Hyderabad: Two engineering students from Hyderabad won the ‘Overall Best Hack’ award at HackHarvard 2024, an annual collegiate hackathon organized by Harvard University students.

The city youth competed against the best hacking teams from leading educational institutions, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Toronto.

Two of the four engineering students on the winning team of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham are from Hyderabad, while Amrit Subramanian and Surya Santhosh Kumar hail from Tamil Nadu and Santosh Kerala, respectively. Chukka Navneet Krishna and Kottakki Srikar Vamsi are pursuing a BTech in artificial intelligence at the Coimbatore-based institution.

The Indian students' team bagged the ‘Overall Best Hack’ award for their do-it-yourself AI-powered application, Sustainify. This app enables users to upload images of waste items, such as bottles or soda cans, and suggests creative DIY upcycling ideas.

“After much discussion, we developed an app that allows users to upload a video of a product’s packaging, instantly revealing its environmental and health impacts. If a product is deemed harmful, the app suggests healthier alternatives,” said Amrit Subramanian.