2022 Big Data Hackathon hosted by SDSU Journalism and Media Studies

The School of Journalism and Media Studies is co-coordinating the San Diego Big Data Hackathon on October 8th and 15th headed by Professors Ming-Hsiang Tsou and Amy Schmitz Weiss. This year's theme, Tackling Real-world Challenges in Healthcare, is sponsored by Sharp Healthcare which will award over $10,000 in prizes. 

Registration is now open until September 30, 2022. Anyone with an interest in making a difference in San Diego is welcome to register.

The 2022 Big Data Hackathon is a collaborative event where domain knowledge experts, creative thinkers, business analysts, programmers, graphic designers, journalists, and map makers work together to create useful solutions to important problems. 

The event brings students from across campus and the San Diego community for a two-day event to ideate and create solutions for issues in San Diego. The students form interdisciplinary teams and formulate and idea to pitch to judges. Teams are given potential questions and issues that are currently top of mind in the healthcare industry, and do a variety of brainstorming activities to identify possible solutions during the two day event.

Weiss shares the benefits of participating in the Hackathon. ​​”Students learn creative thinking, problem solving and collaborative/team building skills. They also learn how to work with people of different backgrounds and disciplines while finding a potential solution to a problem. They also gain new knowledge and information about the Hackathon theme - healthcare in this digital age,” said Weiss. 

Participants use their skills in journalism, business, marketing, data, public health, urban planning, programming, mapping or GIS to make San Diego a better place to live. It’s not just for programmers or public health students; the emphasis on design and creativity means that all skills will be critical to the team’s work. Teams can be formed by participants or will be assigned by Hackathon organizers.

The first day of the event is on October 8th to meet your teams, and the final group presentation will be held on October 15th. Both events will be in Storm Hall West #12 (Charles Hoster Hall) with free parking provided in PS12.  

For questions, contact Amy Schmitz Weiss at [email protected]