04 / 26
HackNYU
Brooklyn, NY · Best Hardware
Custom mechanical keyboard that streams keystrokes as a live coding visualization.
↳ $3.5K + Keychron sponsor deal
★ 1ST
Season 26
3-0
Undefeated
BUILDERS COLLECTIVE — PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FILED: APR 26, 2026 · UNIVERSITY PARK, PA
WE SHIP
while YOU
SLEEP.
Builders Collective is a department-funded squad of Penn State engineers, designers, and degenerates who travel to win hackathons. We don't do meetings. We ship.
WINS
06
First Place Finishes
HACKATHONS
14
Since 2022
SHIPPED
38
Projects Deployed
Prize Total
$84K
Cash + Credits
Roster
22
Active Builders
Miles Traveled
11,420
Cambridge · NYC · SF
Caffeine
∞
Do Not Ask
- Win — HACKNYU — 1ST
- Win — HOPHACKS — 1ST
- TREEHACKS — FINALIST
- Win — MIT REALITY HACK — 1ST
- Win — YALEHACKS — 1ST
- Win — HACKHARVARD — 1ST
- HACKPRINCETON — TOP 5
- Win — PENNAPPS XXV — 1ST
- CALHACKS 11.0 — TOP 10
- BITCAMP — SHIPPED
§ 01 — TROPHY CASE
Six wins.
No moral victories.
03 / 26
HopHacks
Baltimore, MD · Grand Prize
Health-data coprocessor that runs HIPAA-compliant inference on the edge.
↳ $4K + JHU lab time
★ 1ST
02 / 26
MIT Reality Hack
Cambridge, MA · Immersive Track
Mixed-reality drum kit that reads air-gestures and lays down MIDI. Quest 3 + WebXR.
↳ $5K + Meta dev kits
★ 1ST
11 / 25
YaleHacks
New Haven, CT · Best Design
Spatial filesystem for music producers. Drag stems on a 3D canvas to mix.
↳ $3.5K + Figma Org
★ 1ST
10 / 25
HackHarvard '25
Cambridge, MA · Best Overall
Built a real-time multiplayer code-review tool in 36 hours. Beat 412 teams.
↳ $10K + Vercel Pro × 2yr
★ 1ST
09 / 25
PennApps XXV
Philadelphia, PA · Best Use of AI
Agent that audits research papers and flags methodology smells. Now used by 3 PSU labs.
↳ $5K + Anthropic credits
★ 1ST
§ 02 — HACKATHON LOG
Every weekend,
on the record.
| DATE | EVENT | PROJECT | STACK | RESULT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| APR 19 '26 | HackNYU | keystroke.live | QMK · WebSerial · Three.js | ★ 1ST |
| MAR 28 '26 | HopHacks | edge-clinical | Rust · WASM · ONNX | ★ 1ST |
| FEB 14 '26 | TreeHacks | drift-detector | PyTorch · Modal · Postgres | FINALIST |
| FEB 01 '26 | MIT Reality Hack | airdrum | WebXR · Quest 3 · Tone.js | ★ 1ST |
| NOV 09 '25 | YaleHacks | stempile | Three.js · Web Audio · R3F | ★ 1ST |
| OCT 25 '25 | HackHarvard | cohere-review | Liveblocks · TS · tRPC | ★ 1ST |
| OCT 04 '25 | HackPrinceton | paperboy | Next.js · Anthropic API | TOP 5 |
| SEP 13 '25 | PennApps XXV | methodlint | Anthropic · LangGraph · Postgres | ★ 1ST |
| APR 12 '25 | CalHacks 11.0 | tinybench | Rust · Wasmtime | TOP 10 |
| MAR 01 '25 | BitCamp | repl.fm | Tauri · Web Audio | SHIPPED |
↳ FULL ARCHIVE — 10 EVENTS VIEW ALL ↗
§ 03 — ROSTER
Twenty-two builders.
One dorm-room HQ.
#01 · Captain '24
Maya Okafor
Full-stack / Team Lead
WINS
04
HACKS
11
SHIPS
19
#02 · Design '25
Jonas Park
Design Engineer
WINS
03
HACKS
09
SHIPS
14
#03 · ML '25
Priya Subramanian
ML / Agents
WINS
03
HACKS
08
SHIPS
12
#04 · Hardware '24
Theo Bergmann
Hardware / Embedded
WINS
02
HACKS
10
SHIPS
17
#05 · Backend '26
Devon Liu
Distributed Sys
WINS
02
HACKS
06
SHIPS
09
#06 · GFX '25
Sasha Volkov
Graphics / Shaders
WINS
02
HACKS
07
SHIPS
10
#07 · Web '26
Iris Mendoza
Frontend / DX
WINS
01
HACKS
05
SHIPS
08
#08 · Rookie '27
Alex Chen
Rookie / Anything
WINS
00
HACKS
02
SHIPS
03
↳ + 14 BUILDERS NOT PICTURED FULL ROSTER ↗
§ 04 — RECRUITS · SPONSORS
Want in?
Two ways.
FOR BUILDERS
You ship. We pay travel.
We don't have rounds. Show us a repo, a Figma file, or something you broke. If it's interesting we'll call you in 48h.
FOR SPONSORS · DEPT
$14k funded. $84k won.
A 6× ROI on department funding, plus 38 shipped projects, 11 industry collabs, and a pipeline straight into your recruiting funnel.