General Prize - First Place

Ticket and flight to a tech conference of your choice (up to $1000 per hacker).
From IBM: Grand prize HackMIT winners will receive passes to a large developer conference in San Francisco this coming February and the chance to showcase the solution in a dedicated session on-site: “How I won HackMIT.”

General Prize - Runner Up

HackMIT developer pack (choice of hardware/software up to $500 per hacker).

General Prize - Moonshot

Category Prize - Made from Scratch

DIY RepRap Prusa I3 3D Printer Kit.
Forget APIs and prepackaged products -- the core parts of the winning project here will be entirely built from scratch. Libraries and frameworks are allowed, but the part of the project that makes it awesome should be written or built by you!

Category Prize - Master of Both Worlds

Prize: 3DR Solo Quadcopter
Description: Some hacks rock the software and other rock the hardware, but this prize goes to the project that masters both worlds. The hardware and software components of the winning project should both be substantial, technically challenging, and awesome on their own, and even better rolled in one project!

Category Prize - Hack

Prize: Lockpicking Set + One Choice of: GeForce GTX 1070 OR Saleae Logic Analyzer
Description: hack /hak/ verb. To use something in a way it was not originally intended to be used. This prize goes to the project that best embodies the original hacker ethos and reinvents something everyday in an unexpected way to make something awesome. Surprise us! ;)

Sponsor Prize - Amadeus - Best Use of Amadeus APIs

$2000 in Visa Gift Cards for the winning team.

Sponsor Prize - Disney - Best Use of Storytelling

Special Edition BB-8 Droids

Sponsor Prize - IBM - Most Innovative Use of IBM Technology

Opportunity to attend large IBM Conference in 2018 and present their solution to conference attendees. Includes mentoring with IBM Subject Matter Experts and IBM Executives.

Sponsor Prize - Microsoft - Best Microsoft Hack

Microsoft Surface Laptop for each team member (up to 4).

To qualify for the “Best Microsoft Hack”, hackers need to incorporate at least one of the following into their project: * Microsoft API http://aka.ms/api.lib
* Microsoft Azure Cloud http://aka.ms/azureeast
* Bot Framework http://dev.botframework.com/
* Kinect http://aka.ms/kinectdev-center
* HoloLens http://aka.ms/hololensdev-center
* Universal Windows (UWP) App https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get-started/whats-a-uwp

Sponsor Prize - Datto - Best Use of Encryption

Prize: $200 Amex Gift Card for Team
Description: Your project must use some form of encryption, and the prize will be given to the team that goes above and beyond with encryption practices.

Sponsor Prize - Facebook - Best Use of Facebook API

All expense paid trip to Facebook HQ for up to 4 team members for hackathon finals.

Sponsor Prize - iRobot Corporation - Best Roomba 980 Hack (2)

We will give each of the first prize winners for our hackathon a Roomba 980. The Roomba 980 robot vacuum gives you cleaner floors, throughout your entire home, all at the push of a button. Roomba 980 seamlessly navigates an entire level of your home, keeping track of its location and recharging as needed until the job is done. The AeroForce™ Cleaning System with Carpet Boost automatically increases power on carpets where it's needed most. And with the iRobot HOME App, you can clean and schedule on the go.

Sponsor Prize - Concur - Best Travel Hack

GoPro HERO Session

Sponsor Prize - GIPHY - Hack Most Likely to Change How We Communicate

A one on one meeting with our CTO to discuss anything and everything. What's more, he's an MIT alumni.

Sponsor Prize - Goldman Sachs - Best Data Visualization

Snapchat Spectacles.

Sponsor Prize - Goldman Sachs - Second Best Data Visualization

Remote control paper planes.

Sponsor Prize - Hudson River Trading - Most Interesting Use of Data

Prize: Oculus Rift (or Cash Equivalent)
Description: Any project that gathers and uses data to infer non-obvious relationships would be eligible. Some concrete examples would be twists on collaborative filtering, or (for example), identifying shifts in a corpus over time.

Sponsor Prize - Nasdaq - Best Re-imagination of Market

Internship/full-time job interview; Trip to Nasdaq HQ (NYC) or Entrepreneurial Center (SF); Lunch with senior Nasdaq leader. Winning team will have their picture on Nasdaq's Times Square screen and will be shared on Nasdaq's social media platforms.

Hack today's financial markets. We are looking for hacks that introduce a new way to look at financial markets.
Examples:
• Face recognition technology parallel to creating financial landmarks
• Electrical signal process to find financial signals
• Using Amazon Alexa, chat bots for financial use case
• VR for a financial use-case
• Graph technology for finance
• Visualization of some analysis; visualize market data as a tree growing
• Show streaming market data in context of historical norms
• Identify inflection point on streaming market data
• Chart of chocolate milk production vs. Nasdaq-100 index performance

Sponsor Prize - Illumio - Best Security Hack

$1000 in Amazon gift cards for the best security hack (shared among teammates).

We’re looking for creative solutions to all sorts of security problems! Every day at Illumio, we work on solving challenges related to authentication and encryption, authorization and ACLs, network traffic and packet filtering, vulnerability and anomaly detection, and policy deployment at massive scale. But don’t confine yourself to the traditional definitions of security – be creative! Projects will be evaluated based on their complexity, novelty, and implementation.

Sponsor Prize - Samsara - Best IoT Hack

Philips Hue Lights for each team member.

Breakthroughs in semiconductors are making sensors smaller and radically cheaper, and wireless Internet connectivity is becoming ubiquitous. At Samsara, we believe that by making it easy to deploy sensors and analyze their data, customers of all types will be able to use them by the thousands, and in places they've never been used before.

Sponsor Prize - Wolfram Alpha - Best Use of Wolfram Technologies

The award comes with a year access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro and a year of Wolfram|One, and a $500 gift card for each member of the team. The prize is targeted to students to explore the Wolfram Technology Stack and see what awesome hacks they can create with it.

Fun Prize - Dystopian Future Hack

Prize: Snap Spectacles
Description: The dystopian future is here! Build a project most likely to be in a new episode of Black Mirror and win your own pair of Spectacles to record all your nightmarish memories!

Sponsor Prize - Baidu - Machine Learning Community Prize

Sponsor Prize - Firebase/Google - Best Use of Firebase

Sponsor Prize - Best FinTech Related Prize (2)

Sponsor Prize - Firebase/Google - Best Use of Firebase Runner Up (2)

Sponsor Prize - ConsenSys - Best Use of Ethereum

Sponsor Prize - Jumpstart - Best Hack with Startup Opportunity, Runner Up (2)

Sponsor Prize - Baidu - AI for Developing Countries: Hack for Social Good

Sponsor Prize - Baidu - Best Paddle Hack: First Place

Sponsor Prize - Baidu - Best Paddle Hack: Second Place

Sponsor Prize - iRobot Corporation - Best Roomba 980 Hack Runner Up

Sponsor Prize - Samsara - Best Use of Location Data