NumHack
PyData Impact Hackathon
Nov 22 - 24, 2024
A three-day online/virtual hackathon organized by the PyData Impact Scholarship Program, with a focus on AI and positive social impact.

Are you interested in participating, or would like to contribute as a mentor?
What is
NumHack?
PyData Global Impact Scholarship group (Impact Hackathon Committee), under the NumFOCUS umbrella, is organizing an online, AI-focused hackathon in November 2024.
The Hackathon is open to anybody who registers. Teams of at least 3 members are encouraged, and opportunities to form teams two-weeks prior to the Hackathon will be announced.
The event will start Friday Nov 22, and end Sunday Nov 24. Exact times TBD.
Why
Participate?
Learn new skills and technologies - Hackathons provide an intense, hands-on learning environment where participants can acquire new skills, explore unfamiliar technologies, and tackle challenging problems.
Meet new people - Excellent networking opportunity, allowing participants to connect with like-minded individuals, potential collaborators, and industry professionals.
Win prizes - A chance to showcase your work compete to win prizes.
Solve real-world problems - An opportunity to make an impact.
How to
Get Started?
What can you do now?
Sign up at our registration form to stay informed with the latest announcements and exclusive opportunities.
September - November
Stay informed - We will share important information on the hackathon details, including: project guidelines, good practices in building a team, main communication channels, social media accounts and other.
November 4th - November 22nd
Register your team to attend the competition. You will need the following information to register your team: name and surname of the team members, their contact information, time zones, team name and the project description and the category. More information will be available at the end of October.
We can't wait to hack with you!
Important
Dates & Deadlines
Teams Registration Period
Nov 4 - Nov 22
Hackathon
Nov 22 - Nov 24
Winner
Announcement
Dec 5
Registration Open Now
Project
Categories
Participants will select both a "what" (theme) and a "how" (technical category) to shape their project. This matrix structure encourages diverse and creative solutions, allowing teams to align their projects with their unique interests and expertise while staying true to the hackathon's AI for Good mission.
By combining thematic focus with technical depth, participants can collaborate with the community to address emerging challenges. This approach fosters exploration of new AI applications and partnerships, driving innovative solutions for a better world.
The What
Project theme categories
Global Impact
Projects in this category focus on addressing major world challenges such as economic, environmental, healthcare, and socio-cultural issues. Participants are encouraged to build solutions that can drive meaningful change, whether by analyzing global data trends, raising awareness, or creating tools to address critical problems.
Open-Source & AI Accessibility
This category emphasizes the democratization of AI through open-source tools and frameworks. Participants can contribute to or build upon open-source libraries, create educational resources, or develop tools to make AI more accessible and equitable for all.
AI Innovation & Productivity
Projects here focus on advancing the field of AI itself. Participants are encouraged to explore current AI research trends or create productivity-enhancing tools that make scientific computing and AI development more effective, efficient, and user-friendly.
The How
Technical topic categories
Build
Build applications that utilize existing machine learning algorithms or AI models
Train
Architect and train models, customize existing algorithms, or fine-tune on novel datasets
Analyze
Exploratory data analysis, visualization, predictive modeling, and storytelling.
Prizes
Awarded to the top 3 projects of each technical category
1st
$700 USD
2nd
$500 USD
3rd
$300 USD
Projects can win these awards in addition to other prizes
Community Favorite
$500 USD | will be voted @ PyData Global 2024 Dec 3-5
Infrastructure Sponsor Prize
$5000 Compute Credits - Modal
Sponsor Prize
$500 Compute Credits - LightingAI
Meet the
Speakers
Marcin Floryan
Director of Media Delivery & Playback at Spotify
I combine my passion for technology and for working with people to create an environment where people can apply their skills and experience working together towards a shared goal. I care about sustainable, continuous and frequent delivery of value and help teams take pride in the quality of the solutions they build.
Good practices from self-organized squads to be applied/tested in open source software development.
Friday, Nov. 22 @ 18:00 GMT+2
Radia Funna
UN Special Advisor
Founder & Principal at Build n Blaze
I am a futurist and theorist with over 25 years of experience in law, operations, and technology across corporate, government, NGO, and nonprofit sectors.
My work spans organizational strategy, innovation, digital transformation, and the impact of emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) on institutions and societies. I am passionate about finding context and clarity in complex technological and societal shifts.
Open Source in the Age of Convergence
Friday, Nov. 22 @12:30 GMT-4
I believe in the power of human-software-machine interaction to address global challenges and promote equality and I advocate for sustainable development and digital inclusion at global forums.
Charles Frye
AI Engineer at Modal Labs
Brought up in biology, converted to computer science and statistics. Passionate about communicating the joy and potential of quantitative methods to non-experts, with an emphasis on mathematical and applied statistics and machine learning.
Simple Scalable Serverless Services with Modal
Saturday Nov. 23nd @ 9:00 GMT+7
“Serverless" is more than a marketing term. It's an alternative model for computing that takes full advantage of contemporary cloud infrastructure. In this talk, I'll try to convince you of that and present the Modal serverless computing platform, which has been designed from the ground up to offer exactly what data and ML teams need from a serverless platform: simplicity, generality, and, of course, GPUs.
Workshops
Nov 14 2024
17:00-20:00 UTC
Build an Open Source Pipeline for your RAG Project - Sujee Maniyam, AI Alliance; Workshop details
Nov 15 2024
19:00-20:00 UTC
Fine-tuning Language Models - Andrew Siah, Columbia University
Building Agentic and Multi-Agent Systems with LangGraph - Dr. Greg Looughnane & Chris "The Wiz" Alexiuk - AI Makerspace
Nov 22 2024
19:00-20:00 UTC
On NumHACK Airmeet
Our
Sponors
Infrastructure Sponsor
Silver Sponsor
Community
Partners
Partnering
PyData Chapters
We encourage PyData chapters to team up with our global, online initiative by organizing a partnering offline edition of the Hackathon. You can think of this partnership as a reverse hybrid event - the main event will be organized online, and the partnering events will be organized offline in different locations worldwide.
By partnering with the Impact AI Hackathon, your chapter has a great opportunity to participate in a global, diverse, and multicultural event.
Interested in having your chapter participate? More Information
The
Judges
Andrew Siah
Judge
Charles Frye
AI Engineer at Modal Labs
Dibyendu Roy Chowdhury
Data Scientist - Healthcare AI at Care Daily
Avik Basu
Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Intuit
Radia Funna
UN Special Advisor
Founder of Build n Blaze
Mert Bozkir
NumHack Committee Judge
Aleksei Naumov
Lead AI Engineer at Terra Quantum
Nilanjan Chatterjee
MLOpsManager at TransUnion
The
Mentors
Alessandra Bilardi
Data & Automation Specialist at Corley S.r.l.
Arsalan Ahmed
Data Science Engineer at Worktech Labs
Avik Basu
Staff Machine Learning Engineer at IntuitIntuit
Christy Bergman
Freelance GenAI Consultant
Joe Cheng
CTO at Posit PBC
Kalyan Prasad
Data & AI Scientist
Raphael Vienne
Head of AI @ datacraft
Sara El-Ateif
Google PhD Fellow, Co-Founder at AI Wonder Girls
Mikołaj Roszczyk
IoT/AI Assistant in Project "Wilga MiLL"
PyData Warsaw co-organizer
Kenni Konate
Machine Learning Engineer at Omdena
Timothy Spann
Principal Developer Advocate at Zilliz
Interested in mentoring? Sign up Here
Organizing
Committee
Ehizojie Aligbeh
Mert Bozkir
Maxim Vasiliev
Susie Yu
Kamila Stepniowska
[NumFOCUS]
Ernest Kabahima
NumHack
Supporters
Special thanks to the following individuals from the PyData Impact Scholarship Program, whose invaluable contributions were essential in developing the idea of this hackathon. Your support and creativity helped bring this vision to life.
Videsh Jaga
Amogha Kancharla
Ghiffary Rifqialdi
Sahana Venkatesh
Jonathan Starr [NumFOCUS]
FAQ
-
A hackathon is a fast-paced coding event where participants collaborate to create innovative tech solutions within a limited time frame. It's an opportunity to brainstorm ideas, build solutions, make friends, learn new things, and win prizes.
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There are no official requirements for your team members. However, since the hackathon is AI oriented, we strongly recommend that at least one team member will have some prior experience in AI or data science. We also recommend that your team will consist of at least three members.
More good practices on team building will be shared closer to the hackathon day.
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Yes! There is no cost for participating in NumHack.
Speakers, mentors, special guests, judges and Committee members are donating their time to make this event happen.
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Yes, the hackathon is open to anyone who registers by the deadline.
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No specific skill sets are required! We welcome all skill levels. An opportunity to network and find team members of a similar skill level will be given prior to the hackathon.
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No. As a non technical team member you will have a great opportunity to bring a perspective of a potential user, support the team in logistics, management, or leadership. Be creative :)
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NumHack is an online event. Please make sure you will have access to a computer with internet for the duration of the event.
Software and technical requirements will depend on the category and project you work on. More details coming soon. -
This event is organized by PyData Impact Scholars, under the NumFOCUS umbrella.
Learn more about NumFOCUS here https://numfocus.org/
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PyData Chapter will cover:
Sponsors for the venue and catering
Logistics and organization
On-site event coordination and moderation
In-person Mentors
Code of conduct Response Team
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Marketing and promotion - including the registration process
Format guideline
Planning support
Prize for the winning team
Code of conduct workshop
NumFocus legal representation (e.g. invoices, rent agreement)
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The PyData Global Impact Scholarship Program is an online upskilling initiative dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in data science and artificial intelligence. The program has been started as a subtrack of PyData Global online conference.
Learn more at PyData Global Impact Scholarship Program.
Code of
Conduct
PyData has an engaged and respectful community made up of people from all over the world. We are committed to creating a productive, professional, and inclusive environment for everyone. All community members are expected to show respect and courtesy to other attendees throughout the conference, all the hackathon events and online forums. Our code of conduct is strictly enforced.
Do not insult or put down others. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for NumHack.
All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate.
PyData is dedicated to providing a harassment-free community for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of community members in any form.
For the full Code of Conduct, please visit: https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct