Kentucky State University students place first in national hackathon

Kentucky State University students place first in national hackathon

Posted on October 26, 2017

Four students from the Kentucky State University (KSU) computer science program recently earned first-place overall at the IBM HBCU Watson Hackathon in Atlanta.

“This is exceptional news,” Kentucky State President M. Christopher Brown II said. “I am so proud and pleased. I have a strong respect for the importance of hackathon competitions.”

Gigi Barnett, Cory May, Brandon Rogers and Derek Roberts are the members of the KSU team, one of 25 from around the country, who participated in the annual competition.

According to Dr. Frank A. Richardson, assistant professor of computer science at KSU, this was the first time Kentucky State sent a team to compete.

“The teams were presented with a programming challenge and were given 30 hours to complete a solution,” Richardson said. “Solutions were evaluated on elegance, practicality and value.”