Matiwos Birbo Awarded 2nd Place at NSBE Hackathon

Posted on 2022-11-11

Computer Science senior Matiwos Birbo received 2nd place at the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Hackathon, held at the NSBE Region III Fall Regional Conference in Atlanta.

The topic was to use to use engineering concepts/principles to serve justice to millions of minority individuals who have not been given the right to vote fairly.  Matiwos' entry was an application that aims to increase the number of voters being registered and maintains the volume of voters each election cycle.  The application was initially developed using Ruby on Rails and eventually shifted to C.

"This was a really fun event and I was able to exercise what I learned from the University of Memphis towards real-life experiences and issues facing human beings," said Matiwos.  "It was nice representing the University of Memphis and the Computer Science department at the conference."

Matiwos (at right in the photo) worked with teammate Kent Phipps from the University of Florida.