Fintech hackathon inspires real-world problem solving at Miami
Over 50 Miami University students tackled real-world fintech challenges at the inaugural RedHawk Builds hackathon, creating practical software solutions for modern finance
Fintech hackathon inspires real-world problem solving at Miami
Over 50 Miami University students tackled real-world fintech challenges at the inaugural RedHawk Builds hackathon, creating practical software solutions for modern finance
Miami University’s innovation ecosystem took another step forward with the inaugural RedHawk Builds hackathon completion.
Sponsored by the John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Farmer School of Business, the weekend challenged students to build practical software solutions bridging the gap between finance and technology, and to do so over the course of a weekend at the McVey Data Science Building.
More than 50 students formed 17 teams to tackle one of 30 provided prompts within one of six broad categories, ranging from investment banking and commercial banking to student and campus finance.
After Friday night workshops, the teams worked through Saturday to define and refine their ideas, before presenting them to judges on Sunday morning. The top five teams from the first round then moved to the finals, with a prize pool of $3,500 up for grabs.
“The event was incredible. Seeing the amount people learned in a weekend was definitely the most impactful piece,” organizer and junior Finance and Entrepreneurship major Wyatt Borbi said. “The amount of curiosity that people now have, and that they are going to go ask more questions after this is so exciting.”
Sophomores Elise Moeller (Accountancy) and Mehaan Shaik (Organizational Leadership) took first place with their website that helps small business owners calculate and pay their quarterly federal taxes.
“It was genuinely the most creative thing we’ve ever been through. Building, iterating, our back and forth conversations,” Shaik said. “We failed miserably countless times, and learning from that, eventually ideating the solution, then building it, that whole process was genuinely exemplary.”
“We learned more in the past three days than we have this entire semester, and I think the reason for that is because we were being thrown into something that we're not comfortable with, and that's the reason we learn,” Moeller said. “It wires parts of your brain, turns on parts of your brain that are never used otherwise. You need to challenge yourself, dig deep into something, and really commit.”
Billy Crago and Jack Divine, Farmer School alumni and Fifth Third Bank executives, were among the judges for the competition. “The ideas that they were able to come up with... blew me away,” Divine noted. “They held themselves to a high standard and presented as such, pairing creative solutions with a really solid finished product.”
Crago said it was refreshing to see younger talent tackle complex problems head-on using modern tools like AI. “It forces them out of the routine of just being in school and teaches them skills that you're not going to learn directly on the job,” he said.
“I believe Miami is transforming into a very entrepreneurial, student-focused, innovation-focused environment recently, and I think this competition serves as an accelerator for that,” Shaik said.
With the weekend behind him, Borbi said what happens next is up to the students who took part.
"I hope they've learned the capabilities of software and the questions they should be asking of what's out there, what's possible,” he said. “Opening up doors and showing what some of the top builders are doing, I think is really a valuable moment from which they can go now and learn more."
