On Saturday, Women in Computer Science hosted WiCS Hacks, an all-women 12-hour hackathon sponsored by HomeAway, IBM and Bloomberg. This year, the theme of the hackathon was magic and featured categories such as educational technology, community impact, IBM Watson and “magical hacks.” Eighty people attended the event, and the projects were judged by faculty members.

Katrina Riehl, the director of data science at HomeAway, was the keynote speaker of the event. During the hackathon, IBM hosted a workshop about IBM Watson, and HomeAway and UT Makers hosted a Makers workshop. In addition, HomeAway and Bloomberg hosted social events for the attendees.

The winning project in the educational technology category, which was judged by faculty, was “Classflow,” created by Eleni Georgiou, Nila Selvaraj and Eshani Kaul. “Magical Girls,” a project by Erika Vinette and Vivian Cox, won Best Magical Hack, sponsored by Bloomberg. “lettershine,” created by Jacqueline Sigler, Aradhana Sridaran and Twinkle Tharwala, was the best use of IBM’s API, or application programming interface. “Food Detectives,” created by Simran Sohal, Anna Norman, Hannah Epperson and Emily Rude, won the Community Impact category, sponsored by HomeAway. The Best Novice category was won by “Squirrel Spotters,” created by Madeline Huang, Audrey Chung, Megan Mealey and Erica Guthan. The best overall project, “Which witch is which?,” was created by Claire Dubiel, JosieKate Cooley and Aish Shashidhar.