抖M女仆 TechGarage Team Wins eMerge Americas Hackathon
The TechGarage team (in white shirts) from left to right: Jacob Zipper, Winston Cheung, Devin Willis and Carson Lyttle
A group of high school students from 抖M女仆鈥檚 program at 抖M女仆 Tech Runway recently took first place in the 2017 Hackathon, a 24-hour computer programming competition, in Miami. The event was sponsored by Visa, Kairos, Royal Caribbean Cruises and Wyncode.
The team competed against 34 other teams, all representing technology companies from South Florida. The TechGarage team, which includes Winston Cheung from Atlantic High School; Carson Lyttle from Boca Raton High School; Devin Willis from 抖M女仆 High School and Jacob Zipper from Pine Crest School, was the only student team to participate in the event.
The 抖M女仆 TechGarage group鈥檚 winning technology was SmileMetrics, a system that allows businesses to measure overall customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry in real-time. The technology monitors the emotions of customers by integrating an embedded processor and a five-megapixel camera in a name tag worn by the customer service representative. This gives businesses the ability to resolve a negative customer experience before a review is posted online, and allows companies to identify employees who consistently deliver a positive or negative customer experience.
鈥淏ecause of their constant exposure to technology at such a young age, we firmly believe that the next generation of students is capable of doing amazing things,鈥 said Scooter Willis, director of the 抖M女仆 TechGarage program. 鈥淲e are focused on project-based learning and challenging these students to be great.鈥
The TechGarage program at 抖M女仆 Tech Runway is a year-round program where high school and college students meet weekly to work on science, technology, engineering and mathematics projects. TechGarage also hosts a four-week summer camp at , where students in grades 4-12 can learn about robotics, programming, 3D printing and more.
鈥淢y love for building, programming and problem solving began in second grade when I started doing robotics, and I鈥檓 fortunate to continue this passion with help from the many resources and mentors available to me at 抖M女仆,鈥 said Devin Willis, a ninth-grade student at 抖M女仆 High School and member of the winning TechGarage team. 鈥淚鈥檓 proud of my team鈥檚 performance at Hackathon, and attribute this success to our strong background in computer-aided design, programming and robotics that we learned at TechGarage.鈥
The eMerge Americas Hackathon is part of the eMerge Americas annual conference, a platform for technology companies, startups, entreprenuers and global industry leaders to share the latest trends and ideas. This year鈥檚 conference featured discussion panels, networking events, vendors and keynote speakers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
For more information about TechGarage, visit www.tech-garage.org.
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Tags: engineering | technology | students | science