Four University of Central Missouri graduate students competed at HACKUIOWA, an annual two-day Hackathon hosted by the University of Iowa. Nearly 400 students from across the country participated in the event Oct. 6-7, sponsored by Major League Hacking.

Teams work, or “hack,” on projects in an open format which allows the use of applications using hardware, desktop, web or mobile devices.

The Deity Warriors, the UCM team, is comprised of computer information systems majors Abhideep Dharga, Rativardahn Singh Sengar and Sankalp Rajora, who are all from Madhya Pradesh-India, and computer science major Rahul Pargi, who is from Dahod, Gujrat-India.

Singh Sengar said this is the first Hackathon in which the team has competed.

“Our course and curriculum encourages us to do new things,” Singh Sengar said. “We wanted to do something new related to our curriculum we’ve never done before and we decided to participate in this event.”

Dharga was excited to use the opportunity to make connections with future potential employers.

“Since we all are from a master’s program and we are seeking jobs, these types of competitions are very beneficial for us to prove ourselves and can result in a job from the sponsors’ companies,” Dharga said.

The Deity Warriors won Best Use of Authorize.Net by MLH, which was an application interface they used to develop their project called Need Volunteer.

Dharga said their Need Volunteer application can help to streamline the process of finding volunteer work or for organizations to find volunteers.

“Basically the idea behind this is volunteer work,” Dharga said. “So, by using our application people can find events or event can find volunteers. We decided to create such application to help those who face problems to get a proper place for volunteers and volunteers can get the proper event.”

Singh Sengar says he is proud of the team for winning in their first competition.

“Our team had a great experience there and we tried our best for winning,” Singh Sengar said. “Our team was so focused during the competition and it was tough competition, but we are so happy and feel proud to have this award for our university.”

Dharga reflected on the things he and his team took away from the competition.

“The most important thing we got from there was our award, but we learned how to build a project in a limited amount of time, the importance of teamwork and we met new people and the representatives of companies,” Dharga said.

The Deity Warriors plan to continue competing in upcoming hackathons.

“We are going to participate in two more hackathons, one at the University of Missouri and (the) other one is at Kansas State University,” Dharga said.

The Deity Warriors were also recognized by the university with the presentation of plaques at the conclusion of the first presenation in a new “big data and analytics series” that was launched Oct. 19 with guest speaker Paul Boal, vice president of Ameritech Solutions in St. Louis.