Computing students earn top marks

An undergraduate team of students from the School of Computing in the Faculty of Arts and Science travelled to Chengdu, China and earned first place in the international Chengdu80 FinTech Hackathon, held at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE) in China.

Chengdu 80 is a competition for university students to design their financial instruments prototypes using open-source technologies. Teams must create usable prototypes addressing predefined problems within 80 hours and present them to the judging panel during the showcase.

The team, led by mentors Professor Emerita Wendy Powley and Dr. Yuanzhu Chen, were the only all undergraduate team at the competition this year. The team this year was led by fourth year student and team captain Chloe Houvardas. Other team members included John Li, Wafeeqa Chowdhury, Rory Macdonald, and Michelle Shi, all from the School of Computing.

"This is such an incredible experience for undergraduate students, especially to be invited to go to China to represent Queen's on the global stage," says Powley. "I love to see them enjoying the competition and the country and the culture and learning and growing."

She also has special words of praise for team captain Houvardas, who was a second-year student the first time she competed at Chengdu 80. "To be selected as a second-year student speaks a lot to who Chloe is and then to come back two years later to lead the team, I'm just so proud of her. I could always see the potential in her. The last time, being the youngest member of the team, she stood back a bit but still brought a lot to the team. This year, for her to be leading the team, I'm like a proud momma."

Houvardas, who is a veteran of more than 20 hackathon experiences, acknowledges the compliments from Powley and adds she has been very lucky with the experiences she's had in her undergraduate career. She first met her mentor at a Q Hacks event when Powley was judging the event. She calls travelling with her and the team to China a full circle moment.

"I've been really pushed to the limit through the clubs and other experiences at Queen's and feel we are very well-rounded students. The biggest benefit to Queen's computing students is we are very much like Swiss Army knives. We can do all the coding, all the deep technical work, then we can present an investment pitch that's on par with business students."

The challenge this year, Houvardas explains, was to build a platform for vibe coding tools to make it easier to build financial apps. Then, using this platform, they had to build three apps using the platform. "We built a platform to make it easier for small to medium enterprises to quickly build financial apps based on their workflows to help solve financial problems."

Powley, who started her career as one of only a few women in her discipline, also commented on the makeup of this year's team, beyond having five undergraduate students. FAS was one of only a couple of teams that featured three women on their teams of five. "I was really proud to take three women to China to compete and hope to perhaps increase that number in future years."