{"id":276832,"date":"2026-04-20T14:02:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T14:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/276832\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T14:02:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T14:02:57","slug":"pantherhacks-2026-highlights-innovation-sets-new-records-in-the-process-the-panther-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/276832\/","title":{"rendered":"PantherHacks 2026 highlights innovation, sets new records in the process \u2014 The Panther Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

In just 48 hours, Chapman students turned ideas into reality in this year’s PantherHacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With a record high of 79 participants from schools across California \u2014 from UCLA to Santa Clara University and many more in between \u2014 this year\u2019s PantherHacks proved to be a success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully, those connections turn into lasting relationships, especially between students from different schools,\u201d Nataniel Farzan, co-president of PantherHacks and senior computer science major, said about the range of participants.<\/p>\n

The event involves teams ranging from hackers working solo to groups of up to four creating\u00a0 software projects to solve real-world problems. With many different tracks for hackers to choose from, their products will impact a wide range of fields.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year we had four tracks: cybersecurity, entertainment, healthcare and sustainability,\u201d Farzan said. \u201cYou choose one and build a project within that theme. It helps guide ideas, but still gives teams creative freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s projects varied widely in scope and ambition, tackling fields from forensics to video editing and even a project to translate medical jargon. They also brought in industry professionals to inspire participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also had industry guests speak for each track to inspire participants,\u201d Farzan said. \u201cOur keynote speaker was Dr. Sharief Taraman<\/a>. He\u2019s a medical doctor at CHOC<\/a> (Children\u2019s Hospital of Orange County), CEO of a healthcare tech company and a part-time professor. He talked about the future of AI in healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the event itself is just 48 hours in the Sandhu Conference Center, PantherHacks executive member and senior computer science major Joel Escobar highlights the potential for these projects to have a real-world impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of (the projects) start as proof-of-concept projects, but have the potential to grow into full products,\u201d Escobar said. \u201cFor example, one of the runner-ups was an autonomous white hat hacker powered by AI. As companies rely more on AI for security, something like that could definitely become a real-world tool with the right development and resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the various impacts the projects may have, Farzan notes that results are not the only goal; communication is.<\/p>\n

\u201cHackathons are about learning and collaboration more than just winning,\u201d Farzan said. \u201cPeople were constantly talking, sharing ideas, asking questions \u2014 it was a really lively environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

This heavy focus on communication results in the Hacker\u2019s Choice Award. This is an award given to one project each year, voted on by the competing hackers, not by judges. This aspect of the competition aims to promote being social, not just by asking for help, but by connecting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe healthcare team actually campaigned; they went table to table, showed their project and had a catchy video,\u201d Farzan said. \u201cThey were really social, which helped them win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even outside of the award, communication continued to thrive among all participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though everyone was competing against each other, there was so much collaboration happening. I actually watched one team stop what they were doing to help another team debug their code,\u201d said Jeffrey Bok, senior software engineering major and co-president of PantherHacks. \u201cIn a competition setting, that says a lot about the kind of community we have built here.\u201d<\/p>\n

By creating a space where students can be together and be creative, PantherHacks continues to prove the possibility for innovation. As the event continues to grow, so will the projects students make.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In just 48 hours, Chapman students turned ideas into reality in this year’s PantherHacks. With a record high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-276832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}