Student Hackathon Aims to Break World Record This Weekend

With free catered food and gallons of energy drinks fueling wired, red-eyed coders, the organizers of MHacks, University of Michigan's second-annual hackathon, say they're confident that the 36-hour marathon will break the Guinness World Record for largest student hackathon.

To do that, they will have to beat PennApps, University of Pennsylvania's hackathon, which took place last weekend, and attracted 1,000 students in what was billed as "the biggest university hackathon in the world." MHacks organizers say they expect their event to eclipse their rivals, beating that number by several hundred.

"If space were not a constraint, we would have well over 2,000 hackers show up from around the world," said Thomas Erdmann, MHacks' director and a computer-engineering student at the University of Michigan.