The Harvard SEAS LLM Hackathon: From Transformer Basics to Agentic AI
This virtual hackathon is the capstone event for participants of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) course, "Large Language Models: From Transformer Basics to Agentic AI."
This live, hands-on event provides a unique opportunity for participants to apply their learning in a dynamic and collaborative environment. Over a focused two-hour sprint, teams will leverage advanced AI techniques and development platforms to build innovative solutions and prototypes.
The event serves as a practical extension of the course, challenging participants to design, build, and deploy intelligent systems that tackle real-world problems. It is a celebration of ingenuity, rapid development, and the powerful synergy between human creativity and machine intelligence.
Join us for an inspiring and productive experience.
Event Schedule:
Saturday, Oct 11: Starter Toolkit & Project Prompts Released
Sunday, Oct 12 | 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT: Main Hackathon Event
Register for the Hackathon:
To help us plan the event logistics, including the number of virtual breakout rooms, we kindly request all participants to register by Friday, October 10th here.
The team-size is 4-6 participants per team and for those who are looking for teams can make a post on the forum (or would be assigned teams as we approach registration deadline).
This will give us a tentative count of attendees and help us understand team formations ahead of the event.
Code of Conduct & Spirit of the Event
This hackathon is a collaborative and respectful learning environment. All participants are expected to:
Innovate Ethically: Be mindful of the responsible use of AI.
Collaborate with Integrity: All work must be original to your team for this event.
Be Respectful: Foster a positive and inclusive atmosphere in all communications.
The spirit of this event is experimentation. Ambitious projects that don't fully succeed are often more valuable than simple projects that do. Embrace the sprint, learn from the process, and have fun.
Prizes:
We are proud to announce a $3,000 cash prize pool for the winning teams.
1st Place – $1,000
2nd Place – $750
3rd Place – $500
4th Place – $375
5th Place – $375
Hosts & Organizers:
This event is organized by the Harvard SEAS teaching team & VentureMiner.
Teaching Team:
Pavlos Protopapas
Chris Gumb
Rashmi Banthia
Shivas Jayaram
Shibani Budhraja
Vishnu M
Hackathon Organizers:
Matheus Pagani (CEO and Co-Founder, Venture Miner)
Distinguished Jury:
We are honored to have an esteemed panel of judges from across the AI industry.
Esteemed panel of judges:
Patrick Dajos (Founding Software Engineer @ Hyperbound)
Josh Norris (Director of Marketing @ Hyperbound)