owengretzinger/mlh-top-hackers-2020-2023 huggingface dataset:
Alex Breazu

Alex Breazu has loved technology for as long as he can remember. From streaming Nintendo games on YouTube and reconstructing toys as a child, he has risen to become a talented and motivated hacker. His early tinkering with machines led him to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Georgia (UGA).

In college, Alex discovered a passion for software engineering after participating in UGAHacks 5. He loved the beginner-friendly approach many hackathons offer. He remembers, “Eventually, [my team] created a really exciting project that was designed to help out hackers who were overwhelmed or dealing with stress by providing a quick funny gif they could watch. Our team ended up winning the prize for the best first-time hackers at the event and this was a monumental moment in my journey with technology.”

Since then, Alex has been an active member of the hacker community. His UGAHacks5 team returned for UGAHacks 6 the next year and won a sponsored prize that included a summer internship offer. That opportunity changed the trajectory of his career as he realized he wanted to pursue software engineering after graduation. Alex spent over a year interning at NCR, pivoting from mechanical engineering into a software-focused career.

Alex is adept at turning interests into strong career moves. One of his favorite hobbies is taking care of houseplants (currently, owning over 20 of them). Struggling with the complexities of plant health, Alex constructed a tool that he says combines “my mechanical engineering coursework and software engineering experience…to help me take better care of them.” He has turned this tool into the foundation of a startup that is planned to launch soon!

Alex has also stepped up as a leader and mentor in various tech organizations at his university. He was the Logistics and Community Engagement Director of UGAHacks 8, where he planned every stage of the hackathon’s logistics and managed a team of seven organizers. He is also the Lead Organizer for Google Developer Groups Athens, creating events that cater to new developers, students, and experienced professionals. In addition, he is a Student Ambassador for the UGA College of Engineering, representing the college both on campus and around the state of Georgia.

Alex Breazu is a talented and dedicated individual who has made a name for himself in the hacker community. His love for technology, coding, and hackathons has led him to pursue a career in software engineering and placed him in many leadership roles on campus. Alex’s leadership has inspired many others to pursue technology and coding, and he is sure to achieve even more success in the future.
Karan Taneja

Karan Taneja is an enthusiastic hacker from New Delhi, India who uses his tech skills to inspire others and share his excitement about technology. He is a three-time president of the Backslash Computing Society at Thapar University, where he has helped over 3,000 students achieve their computer science goals!

Karan discovered his love for technology in college. Ever since his grandfather first showed him the punch cards used in old computers, he had been fascinated by the evolution of technology and how it has changed the world. It was through access to his university’s programs, labs, and resources that he was finally able to explore technology and develop his coding skills.

Karan's journey in technology and coding has been challenging, with moments of self-doubt and obstacles that tested his resolve, but his passion for technology always drove him forward. He has learned that technology is a powerful tool that can connect and empower people, and he is committed to using it to spread positivity.

Karan's first hackathon, API Hacks 2.0, ignited his desire to share the excitement of the hacker community with others. At Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University For Women (IGDTUW), Karan has served as the club advisor for Celestial Biscuit as well as an advisor to the Technical Resources Community. Combining code and pop culture, he introduced a series of  code-based treasure hunts that he says “brought together over 4,000 people from all walks of life and helped them rediscover their love for coding and engineering.”

Karan has participated in various hackathons and won many awards, including National Winner of Dr. Reddy's Digital Health Hackathon 2023, National 2nd Runner Up of Optum Stratethon Season 4, National Runner Up of Microsoft Imagine Cup India Regionals (Health Category), 5th place at API Hacks 2.0, and Runner Up of Design 'n' Solve at Devcation 2022. He was awarded the Gandhi Young Innovative Idea Award by Anveshan at IGDTUW, which recognizes his commitment to innovation and making a positive impact on society.

Karan's tech journey has challenged him, inspired him, and ultimately transformed him. He is excited about what the future holds and looks forward to using his passion for technology to make a difference in the world.
Simrit Mangat

Simrit Mangat’s interest in technology was sparked at a young age when she watched the popular educational show The Magic School Bus. Her curiosity about how things work led to her involvement in robotics clubs, where she became fascinated with technology. Hoping to use her blossoming tech skills to affect social change, she joined her first hackathon, Creatica 2020. This all-female hackathon gave her an opportunity to collaborate with like-minded individuals and create her first hackathon project, a telemedicine platform designed to reduce the frequency of medical errors by collecting patient data.

At Hackdemonium, she found new avenues to build projects for social good. At the hackathon, she created an online educational tool for students to connect with each other to help them overcome the loneliness and isolation they still felt after the COVID-19 pandemic. Hackathons shifted her approach to coding. As she says, “My experiences with hackathons and the hacker community directly resulted in my pursuits at the intersection of technology and social impact.”

As a Kode With Klossy scholar, Simrit gained technical skills in web development and coding, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. She created a website with over 2600 lines of code to educate citizens about their country's laws and regulations, aiming to inspire civic engagement and promote a greater understanding of the legal system.

Simrit's involvement in the hacker community has not been limited to creating impactful projects. In fact, she began organizing hackathons before even competing in one. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of XdHacks Mini Vancouver, one of the only high school-led hackathons in British Columbia. Simrit and her team have organized four hackathons serving over 560 hackers. XdHacks is responsible for introducing high schoolers to the hackathon scene and encouraging them to pursue careers in STEM.

As a member of the Junior Academy at the New York Academy of Sciences, she’s competed in two challenges, Healthcare On-Demand: The Future of Telemedicine and Bias in AI Systems and Applications. Her team placed first in the Healthcare On-Demand challenge and was a top-three finalist in the Bias in AI challenge. In the Bias in AI challenge, Simrit collaborated with her team to create a tool that uses Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME) and Counterfactual Fairness to identify and measure bias, as well as synthetic data generation and blockchain-enabled audits to eliminate bias. Their work was recognized by S&P Global, and they were invited to present their findings to over 90 members at an AI/ML Accelerator event in collaboration with their Women in Tech group.

Simrit has already accomplished so much in her career, and she’s just getting started. Her dynamic contributions to the hacker community, social outreach efforts, and expertise in technology have allowed her to make a real difference in the world of STEM.
Indira Sowy

Indira Sowy has been on quite a journey. She attends the University of British Columbia across the world from her hometown in the Philippines. With no formal computer science education growing up, she overcame the odds and is now an avid hacker.

When she was a child, Indira loved tinkering with toys and machines. However, she faced obstacles that slowed her progress and made her feel the tech field was out of reach. As she says, “My high school never provided any classes to learn more about computer science topics, and I was discouraged by my peers from pursuing a career in such a male-dominated field, telling me I wasn’t suited for it.” Refusing to give up, Indira pursued online learning opportunities to teach herself programming. By the time college came along, she had the tools to succeed in computer science.

Her first hackathon, Uberposition 2021, pulled her far out of her comfort zone. At the hackathon, she joined a group of strangers she met through the event’s Discord server. Although her team did not win the event, the hackathon helped her overcome her lingering self-doubt and develop new tech skills.

This experience opened Indira up to a new future in hacking, and she has since entered multiple hackathons, improving her skill set and broadening her horizons in tech each time. In her third hackathon, cmd-f 2022, she won the MLH Most Creative Use of GitHub prize and the UBC Project Incubation Prize, earning her the opportunity to build new technologies through her university’s Computer Science department. She also competed in Hack the 6ix 2022, placing as a Top 8 Finalist and getting to present her project in front of accomplished judges. Her project at Hack the 6ix won the MLH Most Creative Use of Twilio prize.

Hackathons helped her land her first internship as a Software Engineering Intern, as well as many more in the following summers, and landed her a spot in the Major League Hacking (MLH) Fellowship Prep program. Outside of hackathons, she is involved with Rewriting the Code, Girls Who Code, UBC Launchpad,  and ElevateTech, and helps organize ElevateHacks and Juvenile Hacks.

Indira’s career at UBC has taken many turns. She struggled in many of her early hackathons to the point of nearly giving up, but the MLH community came through for her. She discovered a mentor who gave her the valuable advice to view hackathons as learning experiences, not just as events to win. Once Indira adopted that mindset, her hacking career took off and her potential was unleashed.

This change naturally pushed Indira into mentoring others. She understood the frustration of being the least experienced coder in the room. As she gained new skills, she turned towards coaching, especially for women-identified hackers going through what she did so recently. She says, “Now, I am glad to give back to my community and offer guidance to those doubting their abilities to succeed in the field.”

Indira has demonstrated what a willing mind and strong determination can do. She is an example of what people are capable of achieving if they keep moving forward when others tell them to quit.
Janet Zulu

Janet Zulu fell into coding mostly by chance. She was browsing YouTube when she discovered a video encouraging viewers to try and learn to code. Since that fateful day, she has thrown herself full force into programming, and has become an accomplished developer along the way.

When she started at Texas A&M University – San Antonio, she knew computer science was her calling. She joined the hackathon community after attending her first hackathon, Veterans Codeathon 2021. It was there that she fell in love with hackathons and learned the importance of teamwork. As she says, “Coding can be incredibly challenging, so keeping others motivated is essential. Learning more about the hackers around me and encouraging each other definitely helped me.”

Her first hackathon experience was not all smooth sailing. As she says, “When I was invited to join, I felt overwhelmed with imposter syndrome. I reached out to my peers for advice on how to excel and contribute to the upcoming hackathon, but I was still nervous. As the hackathon began, I struggled to believe that I deserved the title of hacker.” Once the event got underway, however, Janet gained confidence in her skills. Although her team did not win the event, they were extremely proud of their achievements.

After her first hackathon, Janet participated in more events, some fraught with challenges, like HackUTD 2022, where she had to restart her project halfway through the competition. Others went down as more memorable than others. At TAMUhack 2023, Janet’s team put their heads together and won the General Motors AI challenge. With the support of her peers, Janet has overcome the self-doubt she faced early in her hackathon career.

As a DREAMer (beneficiary of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), Janet has faced numerous challenges and obstacles. Through education and a positive attitude, triumphing over the odds has become a habit. She has risen to become President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and ACM’s Women in Computing at Texas A&M. Her efforts to remove limitations for other DREAMer students have led to fundraising and transportation solutions for many coders. She says, “I am proud to say that we have been able to take 36 students to hackathons completely free of charge, and all hackathons requiring travel for the fall 2023 semester are fully funded.” Her compassionate approach inspires and motivates others in her community.
Mareline Ramirez

Mareline Ramirez had always thought she would pursue a career in healthcare, electing for a major in Health and Human Concerns at Florida International University and even working as a medical assistant for several months. She was also heavily involved in her campus community as the Vice President for APPA at FIU, FIU’s pre-physician assistants organization. During the peak of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, Mareline learned coding basics and created the club’s website to better communicate and share resources with members virtually. Her efforts attracted 300+ additional club members. Mareline loved the experience of learning to code, and felt fulfilled creating something which had an immediate and tangible impact on others.

When Mareline graduated from FIU she still had a passion for coding, but was unsure how to put it to use. Initially, she was nervous to pursue a career in technology. Women are still underrepresented in Miami’s tech industry and face gaps in access and resources. Not to mention that most of Mareline’s network was based in healthcare. Luckily, she had a few friends who studied computer science, and they encouraged her to build on her passion for coding. Just a few months later, Mareline began a second degree at FIU in computer science.

Switching to a career in tech after so much time in healthcare wasn’t always easy. Mareline enrolled in the Microsoft Tech Resilience mentorship program shortly after deciding to study computer science, but felt timid and out of place in her male-dominated classes. However, she found excellent mentors at Reboot Representation, and credits her friend Danay Fernandez (president of FIU Women in Cybersecurity) for providing her with the resources she needed to get started in computer science. Through Danay, Mareline was introduced to TechTogether, a series of hackathons focused on narrowing the gender gap in technology.

While Mareline’s first hackathon experience at CodeDay 2021 certainly helped to grow her skillset, she believes the experience of participating in TechTogether Chicago 2022 was pivotal in her career. Mareline says she immediately felt welcomed and resonated with TechTogether’s mission of empowering marginalized genders in tech. Mareline has always been passionate about tackling gender inequality, so when she had the opportunity to follow Danay in leading TechTogether Miami as the Chapter Director, it seemed like the perfect fit.

In her role as Chapter Director, Mareline has been able to help bridge the gender gap in the Miami tech community and provide support to students coming from similar non-traditional backgrounds. She continues to provide support for other students, and has gotten involved in a number of other gender-focused events in the Miami-Dade area like Code/Art Fest 2022, FIU’s Women in Tech Conference (WiTCON), HackaBull 2023, and Technica 2022. In addition to her role as Chapter Director for TechTogether Miami, Mareline stays actively involved in the hacking community through her university’s chapters of Women in Computer Science, INIT, and Break Through Tech.
Sarah Graywood

Sarah Graywood has always had a knack for mentoring others. A career educator who recently made the switch to a career in tech, Sarah has been able to leverage her impressive background in education to both share her knowledge with others and develop her skills as a programmer in her own right.

For someone who has always loved being a mentor, leaving a career in teaching was a difficult decision. Before Sarah decided to pursue a career in tech, she was working more than 60 hours a week, struggling to find time for her family and feeling the drag of perpetual burnout. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, teaching more than 100 students remotely, Sarah became interested in how the technologies she used to connect and educate students actually worked. She started using a mobile app to code on her 15-minute breaks between classes. Within three months, Sarah had been admitted to a Techtonica bootcamp, and she was able to translate that experience into an internship with Flickr beginning that fall.

After a hiring freeze at Flickr prevented her from securing a full time position with the company, she learned about Major League Hacking (MLH). The CEO of her Techtonica bootcamp recommended she continue learning through the MLH Fellowship. Sarah initially felt intimidated about applying, knowing she would be up against career hackers. But Sarah thrives on the challenge of overcoming adversity, so she applied anyway. She was admitted for the Fall 2022 season, and participated in her first hackathon, the MLH Fellowship Orientation Hackathon, where she developed an even greater love of programming.

Sarah says the support from MLH Fellowship friends and fellow hackers has helped her learn and grow, while also allowing her to guide others. Sarah is grateful for the hackathon experience, which she says has helped her hone her programming skills while gaining exposure to completely new concepts. She has felt less stress, is able to better balance her work and life, and feels like she truly enjoys her new career in tech.

This isn’t to say Sarah is no longer practicing her skills as an educator. As a woman of color in a field where both women and people of color are underrepresented, Sarah understands the challenges many new hackers face in building a career in tech. Her experience as an educator, which totals more than a decade, makes her well-suited to mentor others and to understand their unique circumstances. She believes her ability to empathize with others makes her stand out within the hacker community. Sarah is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and focuses her efforts on increasing accessibility for hackers who have had non-traditional paths and lacked the resources to attend computer science programs. Recently, she was admitted to the Adobe Digital Academy, and has since secured an internship with Adobe starting this June. She plans to continue on to a career in full stack software engineering.
Nisarg Thakkar

Nisarg Thakkar first felt the pull of tech in the form of game design. His journey as a coder has taken him from game development to designing applications for social good. When he isn’t coding, Nisarg makes connections at hackathons, organizes community events, and serves as a community mentor.

When he was 14 years old, Nisarg loved video games. This passion got him wondering about how they were developed, and through his curiosity, he eventually discovered Python and Pygame. Building retro versions of Pong and Snake awakened a deeper interest. He says, “As I continued to develop games and learn more about coding, I began to realize just how much I loved working with technology. There was something incredibly satisfying about taking an idea and turning it into a working program. I loved the problem-solving aspect of coding and the sense of accomplishment I felt when I finally got everything to work.”

Just two years later, Nisarg entered his first coding event: the 2018 Google Code-In Contest. He saw firsthand the power of collaboration to advance technology as everyone worked together to achieve spectacular results and create projects that affected positive change. The idea of community became an overarching theme for Nisarg, and he proceeded to join Major League Hacking (MLH), Code Newbie, and Hacktoberfest—all ways to grow and bond over coding and tech. Opportunities these communities presented for him included content writing for Hashnode, contributing to open source efforts, and voice chatting with the MLH network about new technologies like Snyk Cybersecurity.

Nisarg first dove into hackathons at Hack in the North 2022. At the event, he discovered new platforms, languages,  and problem-solving approaches as well as his potential to  mentor others. He remembers, “I would clear any doubt in the MLH Discord or provide assistance to those who had hackathon-related queries.” Nisarg’s willingness to give back was not limited to hackathons. He conducted a seminar on web development at his college, DEPSTAR. He also contributed to DecodeCafe, interviewing MLH hackers about their hackathon experiences. All of this involvement has shaped Nisarg into the mentor he is today.

He is proud to say, “Ultimately, I believe that my contributions have helped to make the hacker community a more welcoming and supportive place for everyone involved.” His many roles within the community have allowed him to broaden his impact and reach many people in a relatively short time. Whether he is creating fresh Discord content on the latest technologies, mentoring new hackathon attendees, or simply answering forum help requests, Nisarg is always finding new ways to contribute to the hacker community.