Three ASMS Students Become Finalists in the 2024 Hudson Alpha Tech Challenge (HATCH) Competition

On the weekend of March 1, ASMS students participated for the first time ever in the 2024 HudsonAlpha Tech Challenge (HATCH) competition in Huntsville. Sponsored by the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, the annual event invites professionals, college students, and high school students from around the country to compete in a hackathon, pitch a new tech product to a panel of judges, and vie for thousands of dollars in cash prizes.

ASMS senior Brandon Hunt and juniors Brayden Howell and Jonathan Hulcher represented ASMS in the competition. At HATCH, they were challenged to learn and implement new tech skills on the fly. As they worked, they were assisted by onsite computer science experts and entrepreneurs.

The ASMS team’s project involved the creation of a medical examination room and diagnosis center in a virtual reality environment. This entailed building the room in the Unity video game engine, protecting patient data in the MySQL database management system, and providing secure data transfer services through the PHP scripting language.

The ASMS team members were recognized as finalists in the high school division and presented a working product demo to industry professional judges. While they did not earn first or second place prizes, their overall performance and finalist standing were impressive for first-time competitors. Our junior entrants are already strategizing about how they will take the lessons from this year and apply them to the contest next year.