Winners of first UCL physics hackathon announced

PhD students from UCL Physics & Astronomy took part in the department's first 'hackathon' last week. In this competition, students representing the department's five research groups competed to complete projects in just two days.

The winning team, (Elijah Lator, Tanapom Poomaradee, Ilhan Candan, Nairi Usher and Jacob Lang) built the "solarmobil" a toy car aimed at girls. It's solar powered and equipped with replaceable wheels carved from sweet-potato.

Second prize went to Thomas Durant, Henry Banks, Kathleen Cox, Daniela Saadeh and Sam Fayer, who wrote a genetic algorithm code which evolves giraffes from basic shapes and colours; and adapts them to different environments. A standard giraffe was demo-ed as well as the urban giraffe (camouflaged against buses) and the polar giraffe (white-ish!).

The event was sponsored by Futurice and Deloitte Digital, and held at the Wellcome Trust.

Image caption

Elijah Lator, Tanapom Poomaradee and Ilhan Candan (of the winning team). Photo credit: UCL Physics & Astronomy