Five Hockaday Upper School students attended the EarthxHack Hackathon at Fair Park last weekend and placed first, beating out 78 college teams and one high school team. The all-girls team won best overall app and received $4,000 dollars. A team from the Massachusetts of Technology finished in second place.

EarthxHack 2018, a 24-hour hackathon is designed to empower students and professionals to use technology to solve issues facing the world. Teams composed of two to five people were tasked with building game-changing prototypes.

Junior Isabel Peppard and sophomores Ann Segismundo, Maisy Crow, Riyana Daulat and Karen Lin entered the competition with no previous coding or IT experience. After introductory coding training, the students developed an app that would allow users to connect to use public transportation and increase safety, while reducing the carbon footprint for transportation. They then pitched the idea of “ROAMMATE” to the EarthxHack panel of judges.

“As president of the All Green Club at Hockaday, it is events such as EarthxHack that give us a platform to share our love and concern for the Earth,” said Riyana Daulat. “I am looking forward to making our app a reality.”