The ninth annual Hack Merced hackathon provided a platform for more than 150 undergraduate collaborators to develop creative technology solutions to issues. This year’s competition featured a Health for Social Good track, sponsored by CITRIS at UC Merced, that highlighted the intersection of tech, nutrition and human health.
Team Foood’s image segmentation model topped the track, enabling users to take a photo of a meal and obtain detailed nutrition information. The second place team developed a project called the Diabetes Risk Assessment Model, demonstrating how machine learning can be used in health diagnostics by using neural networks to assess health risks based on user surveys.