7-23-2024 10:49pm

Mason Man Part Of Winning UC Team

Beth Callahan Editor

(Photo/Daniel Vennemeyer) University of Cincinnati students Phan Anh “Rai” Duong, left, and Daniel Vennemeyer at the EasyA x VeChain Bay Area Hackathon.

Submitted story from University of Cincinnati Public Information Officer, Media Relations + Content Kyle Shaner

MASON, OH-- With an app that combats food waste and incentivises donations to food banks, two University of Cincinnati students were part of a team that won an artificial intelligence and blockchain hackathon competition in San Francisco, California. And, Daniel Vennemeyer, one of the UC students, is from Mason, Ohio.

Vennemeyer, a computer science, economics and mathematics student who also is pursuing a master’s degree in AI through UC’s Accelerated Engineering Degree, (ACCEND) program, along with Phan Anh “Rai” Duong, a computer science student, were part of a team that won the grand prize in the EasyA x VeChain Bay Area Hackathon. The UC students were thrilled to win first place, especially considering the hackathon featured top talent from throughout the world.

“It was scary because not only were we in the Bay Area, so we had all the Stanford students, all the [University of California] Berkeley students competing against us, but EasyA actually had flown out more than 100 participants from all the top colleges and top companies across the world,” said Vennemeyer. “It wasn’t just students; it was professionals, too. Usually if you do hackathons, they’re more regional. They flew people out from Japan, Poland, France in addition to all these people who were already amazing and cool.”

When they traveled to San Francisco, the group initially planned to develop a volunteer tracking app. However, when they saw the competition categories, they decided to shift their focus.

The team chose to compete in the food and beverage category that, paired with the hackathon’s focus on sustainability, inspired their idea to create an app to combat food waste and incentivise donations to food banks.

Their concept would benefit

Food banks who would receive donations,
Businesses who would receive money for food that otherwise would have been thrown away and
People in need who would receive food.

The app even included dynamic incentives that offered extra rewards for donations to food banks most in need.

The first thing the group needed to focus on was creating a working app, which they named B3TRBite (pronounced like Better Bite), that had the basic features it needed to function. They were able to connect it to VeBetterDAO, a platform launched at the hackathon that promotes sustainable actions and added extra features in the competition's final hours.

“Not only were we able to talk about this and get a draft working, we were actually able to deploy it,” said Vennemeyer, a member of UC's NEXT Innovation Scholars. “We basically had a fully working app. It was still a minimum viable product, but it was a fully working app that was out by the end of that 24 hours.”

The UC students were able to participate in the hackathon thanks to a personal invitation from a co-founder of EasyA, a software development and blockchain education company.

Vennemeyer, a research assistant at the Kautz-Uible Cryptoeconomics Lab housed at UC Digital Futures, traveled to Austin, Texas, for Consensus 2024 Presented by CoinDesk, the world's largest gathering that brings together all sides of the cryptocurrency, blockchain and Web3 community.

During his trip to Austin, which was funded by the Kautz-Uible Cryptoeconomics Lab, Vennemeyer met the co-founder of EasyA. He was personally invited to form a team for the EasyA x VeChain Bay Area Hackathon and given a scholarship to cover travel expenses.

“That was a deal that I didn’t want to pass up,” said Vennemeyer, who rescheduled a midterm to attend the hackathon. “If somebody else is going to pay for you to fly out to San Francisco for a weekend, it’s a pretty good deal.”

Vennemeyer immediately knew the first teammate he wanted was Duong, a friend who he often collaborates with in organizing hackathons at UC and together founded the UC AI Society.

Duong quickly accepted the invitation and was able to get a couple days off from his co-op at Great American Insurance Group, where he works integrating and automating the work of software development and information technology operations.

The UC students rounded out their team with three people they connected with through the hackathon’s group chat. Their three teammates included two college students and a software developer at Ford Motor Company.