Inspired by Catherine Appleby’s experiences as a hackathon enthusiast during high school, Sandia partnered with Explora Science Center and Children’s Museum’s X Studio to host its first high school hackathon, Thunderbird Hacks, in January. Nearly 70 students participated, guided by 15 Sandia volunteers.

Catherine, a member of Sandia’s Applied Machine Intelligence department, teamed with Community Involvement to foster a new STEM event designed to nurture young talent in the field of computer science. The hackathon had a music theme, in which students predicted song popularity using provided datasets on music characteristics. Armed with Python Jupyter Notebooks in an online computing environment, participants were tasked with developing predictive models, which were then put to the test on unseen data.

Students were given resources to prepare ahead of time, ensuring that everyone had a fair chance to showcase their skills. The day of the event, students collaborated in teams of four to dive into the world of coding and machine learning. Equipped with a base linear regression model, participants embarked on a thrilling journey of problem-solving and creativity.

“I loved how excited and hardworking the kids were. Teams were working up to the last moments to improve their error scores,” Catherine said. “At the end of the hackathon, we had lots of participants coming up to us asking about internship opportunities at Sandia, showing just how motivating this event was.”

The culmination of Thunderbird Hacks saw the recognition of top-performing teams, with prizes awarded to the top three winners. The prestigious “Mentor’s Choice” award celebrated teams that demonstrated exceptional perseverance, teamwork, positivity and support for their peers.