The eighth annual RamHacks was held virtually on September 25-26, 2021 and hosted by VCU’s computer science department and students. Participants had 24 hours to create solutions for problems presented by industry sponsors Parsons, CoStar, Bank of America, CarMax, OutSystems and CiperTech.

The event concluded Sunday afternoon with the presentation of first-, second- and third-place awards. Sponsors also awarded prizes and gifts to teams that accepted additional challenges during RamHacks.

First place went to the Airline Customer Satisfaction team. Their project explores how competitors in the airline industry are performing against each other by comparing customer sentiment through tweets. This blueprint can help companies analyze their clients’ interest in a product, service or stock.

Second place teams QuickApply and CarMax Website also impressed the panel of judges. Team QuickApply created a virtual chat agent with an interactive user interface that can help candidates find and apply to open positions. The CarMax Website team’s project assists buyers in making a sound car purchase.

Three teams took home the third-place title: Go with the Flow, Curate and Genesis. Go with the Flow created a system to keep menstrual health tracking as simple as possible. The Curate team helps job seekers by gathering info from employers’ job listings and providing keywords and direct links to positions. Genesis continued the trend of revolutionizing the job search process by creating a career website to assist candidates with their search, which included features such as a career quiz. 

“RamHacks allowed students not only to put their programming skills to the test while solving real-life problems, but also offered unparalleled opportunities for networking,” said Bartosz Krawczyk, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science and faculty adviser to RamHacks.