This past weekend in Washington, D.C. at the AAAS Annual Meeting, the George Hacks team had the opportunity to share their organization with a community of scientists dedicated to improving society both environmentally and socially.

Our presentation, titled “Promoting Social Change Through Innovation with GWU’s George Hacks” covered our achievements in engaging students in social impact innovation at our hackathons. We discussed the intersection of innovation & entrepreneurship, the hackathon lifestyle, and the GWU startup ecosystem.

Our student-led organization promotes a problem-based interdisciplinary approach to solving current social and technological healthcare issues through the competitive, project-based events we organize. We successfully hosted our second annual 24-hour medical solutions hackathon this past January to solve issues raised by local and national healthcare organizations. In partnership with the Veterans Health Administration, we presented students with current challenges ranging from veteran health care, to on-campus food insecurity, prosthetic modification, and much more.

We showed attendees the applicable solutions students have created at their events and provided information for both undergraduate and graduate students who may want to get involved through competition or expansion of the organization. George Hacks is excited to further our outreach and create these new partnerships.