If you’ve ever participated in a hackathon, you’re probably familiar with that edge-of-your-seat feeling as the clock counts down while you feverishly innovate to solve a real-world problem. At this year’s first-ever “StagHack,” high school students did just that.

A hackathon is an event for students interested in problem-solving, working on a team, and collaborating with others to solve a problem and present their solutions. At the StagHack hackathon, teams collaborated with mentors to solve issues in the biomedical and healthcare industry.

This year’s hackathon featured keynote speaker Gary Sorrentino, global deputy chief information officer at Zoom. During his speech, he discussed how Zoom became the dominant communication platform for business and social interaction during the pandemic.

“We had such a successful hackathon event,” said Assistant Dean of the School of Engineering Jessica Teri. “We had about 40 high school students participating from all over the world, with two first-place winners.”

During the competition, each team had to solve healthcare-themed problem sets; the solutions were then judged by School of Engineering faculty members. Joining the presenter panel this year were Scott Wilson, chief of staff and vice president of product development at Goodroot Inc., and Nicholas Mercadante ’04, founder and chief executive officer at Pursue Care.

One of the winning teams developed an app that would help young adult drug users connect with resources anonymously. The app was designed to connect individuals with emergency services, alert nearby hospitals of a potential overdose, provide information on signs of what an overdose looks like, and show how to use Naloxone in the event of an overdose. StagHack’s winning teams were awarded both scholarship and cash prizes.