Timing pays off for CCI grad student

Master’s student Khalia Braswell made the most of an invitation from a friend to participate in the 2013 Focus 100 Global Mobile Hackathon – she turned it into a winning effort.

Braswell, pursing a graduate degree in the College of Computing and Informatics Department of Software and Information Systems, was invited by a friend who attends Clemson University to join her team.

“I was ecstatic since it was the first one (hackathon) I’ve ever attended,” stated Braswell. “We were the only all-female team, which also included two Ph.D. students and a post-doc from Clemson University. Winning the hackathon gives me motivation to continue building mobile applications and to attend more hackathons.”

The overnight competition, part of the 2013 digitalundivided Focus 100 Conference, held in New York City, was dedicated to creating innovative ways to increase access to data/information on mobile platforms in urban communities around the world. Braswell and her winning teammates developed an app that allows users to identify healthier ingredients for recipes and places them on a leader board where they will be ranked by others who also have the app. The more points a recipe earns, the greater the reward.

Braswell’s key research area is human-computer Interaction, and she is interested in using social media technologies to help make social change. Currently, Braswell is a graduate assistant in the Academic Technology Department in the College of Health and Human Services, where she is assisting with several projects that use social media to help with HIV/AIDS prevention.

Photo: Braswell (left) with part of the Hackathon team.