The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Engineering Department of Computer Science hosted its 4th annual eHacks competition March 8-9 at the T-REX Innovation Center in downtown St. Louis.
Nineteen projects, completed by approximately 80 participants, were created and judged. This year’s competition featured numerous game projects, as well as projects involving hardware, and one that included a robotic laser.
Competitors came from collegiate institutions, including SIUE, Washington University in St. Louis, 
University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC), Missouri University of Science and Technology, Saint Louis University, Southwestern Illinois College, Ranken Technical College and more.
Receiving the Best Overall project award were SIUE’s Blaise Willoughby, Laban Colyott, Kyle Fricilone and Nicolas Carter, UMKC’s Samuel Feye and Ranken’s David Blackburn. Their project, Behemoth, was a spaceship battle game built using Unity game development software and C# programming language.
Another game, “Project-oblex,” took the Most Ambitious prize. The solo project, created by SIUE’s Dale Auten, is a system for playing a physical board game with online players, where a camera watches the game board and produces a virtual version for online players.
“eHacks is about learning, having fun and building confidence,” said Dennis Bouvier, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science. “There were a lot of happy, tired people by the end of this 36-hour hackathon.”
“We had some incredible projects this year,” he added. “A lot of participants went home feeling like winners. T-REX is a place where technology companies get started, so it is the perfect location for our eHacks event.”
Prizes highlighted ingenuity, creativity, execution and marketability. In addition to the Best Overall and Most Ambitious awards, winners were chosen in the prize categories of Best Game, Community Impact, UX/UI and Data.
eHacks 2019 also featured technical talks from Centene Corp. and Bayer. Centene discussed cloud computing, 
while Bayer’s presentation introduced a programming language called Elm.
Along with Centene and Bayer, event sponsors included Enterprise Holdings, Allscripts, NISC, Object Computing, AT&T and Edward Jones.
Multiple SIUE computer science students and alumni volunteered their time to make the event a success, with the strong help and support of Bouvier. Volunteers included current students Taylor Dowdy, Justin Bruce, Michael Bracy, Brandon Burke, Jared Schooley and Megan Ramaker, and alumnus Eli Ball.
Photos: Judge Mitch Zurliene tries out Behemoth, the Best Overall project, while team members (L-R) Blaise Willoughby, David Blackburn, Laban Colyott, Kyle Fricilone, Nicholas Carter and Samuel Feye look on.
(L-R) Judges Erik Verduim and Matt Lievens are intrigued by the Most Ambitious project created by SIUE’s Dale Auten.
SIUE alumna Meg Heisler (seated) judges a project while team members stand by.
SIUE Associate Professor of Computer Science Dennis Bouvier, PhD, (far right) stands with SIUE student and alumni volunteers.