Venture In
Metaverse
Hackathon
Mission - Harvard i-lab Venture in Metaverse Hackathon is run by the Founder in XR & Metaverse Subcommunity. By connecting students and alumni with investors and industry leaders in the XR, metaverse, and blockchain fields, our goal is to enable participants to explore the technology and business opportunities in the metaverse.
Explore - We have a lineup of stellar experts to host panels, workshops, and office hours to equip participants with the fundamentals to create unique metaverse applications and educate participants on key business concepts to jumpstart potential ventures.
Build - Whether you come in with just an idea or already have a beta project. We provide resources to help you join or create a venture in the metaverse. You will have the chance to build your project/venture ideas, polish business models, and finally pitch to a group of investors and industry leaders.
Connect - Our participants are from schools at Harvard and MIT. We welcome all creators, designers, developers, business leaders, and domain experts. The hackathon provides an opportunity to collaborate and network with people from various backgrounds who are just as passionate about ventures in the metaverse as you!
Our
Guests
Dwight
Merriman
Co-Founder & Chairman, MongoDB
Vishal
Punwani, MD
Co-Founder & CEO, SoWork
Vishal (‘Vish’) is the CEO and co-founder of SoWork - the 'Workplace Metaverse' - founded at Harvard's iLab.
Besides being a CEO, Vishal is a medical doctor, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, a Mentor at the Oxford Foundry, and Alumni Advisor at MassChallenge Boston.
Alistair
Hume
Co-Founder & the Head of Design,
Axon Park
Alistair is also a prolific world builder and longtime VR developer, who has cultivated a large online following through a YouTube channel focused on VR development.
Taylor
Freeman
Co-Founder & CEO, Axon Park
Taylor is the co-founder and CEO of Axon Park. He started his journey with XR in 2014 and was awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 for his work building the XR industry.
Hakan
Satiroglu
Founder & CEO, XR Terra
Kachina
Studer
Co-Founder & VP of Product,
XR Terra
Athena
Demos
Co-Founder & CEO, Big Rock Creative
Max
Newlon
President BrainCo USA.
Max graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Education after working in neuroscience research labs at Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center studying the impact of meditation and yoga on the brain, as well as the impact of invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technology on people with Parkinson’s disease. Now as President of BrainCo, he leads the visionary team that is bringing BCI technology to the world so that millions of people can benefit from the next technological revolution that will unlock human potential.
Victoria
Feng
BD Director at BitMart Exchange & Cipholio Venture
Mentor at Launchpad Luna
Co-Founder at xDemic
Victoria is the BD Director at BitMart Exchange and Cipholio Venture, A global leading crypto firm. An technopreneur at xDemic. A decentralized credential management service. Having considerable expertise in blockchain, finance, NFTs, and DeFi.
Our
Experts
Lester used to be CEO of Huobi Europe and Global insititional busee, director of Huobi Strategic Investment. Within two years, Lester brought in more than 400 global institutional clients, driving up the non-China institutional trading volume from less than 5% of the overall Huobi trading volume to 45%, both on spot and derivative. Before joining crypto industry, Lester was a venture capital investor for four years and he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.
Rus
Gant
Director of the Harvard Visualization Research Laboratory and the Director of the Virtual Harvard Project
Matt
Cook
Digital Scholarship Program Manager
for Harvard Library
Matt has consulted on the development of various “innovation spaces” (e.g. makerspaces, viz labs, etc.), commercial software ventures, and , as an engineer, he has deployed (hardware and software-based) tools for indoor navigation, mindfulness, 360-degree vision, rapid prototyping, and natural language visualization. Find out more at mncook.net
Yaser
Mahmoud
Product Strategy Lead,
Meta AR/VR.
Yaser is a former Product Strategy Lead at Meta AR/VR, VC Investment Fellow at Owl Ventures, Chapter President of the VRAR Association, TA for the AR/VR Studio at the Harvard Innovation Lab, and MBA Student at HBS.
Iulian
Radu
Principal Research Scientist at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, XR Education
Radu’s work involves prototyping and user research for XR education with adults and children, intersecting on educational innovation, makerspaces, embodied collaborative learning, and software / hardware engineering. Previously, he has led projects for MIT, PBS KIDS, Samsung Research, Qualcomm, WestEd Research.
Lucas
De Bonet
LucidVR, VR Hardware &
Content Creation: VR Haptic Gloves
Lucas DeBonet, MIT Freshman, YouTuber and VR hardware dev will present a workshop on the development of super affordable VR Haptic Gloves. A leader in the VR-maker community, Lucas has created an open-source VR Haptic Glove that can be built for as low as $60 per pair, and formed a community around the project called LucidVR. His VR hardware videos have amassed over 18 million views on his social media channels. To learn more visit:
Kevin
Gislason
Manta Network
Kevin Gislason is the lead of full stack developers at Manta Network. He previously developed supply chain software for Wayfair, quantitative trading tools for a private office, and a custom Bitcoin hardware wallet. Kevin obtained his bachelor degree from UChicago and self-taught programming in order to work on cryptocurrencies.
Lester
Li
CEO & founder of L2Y & DeGame
Aubrey
Simonson
Grabbing Things in VR
Aubrey Simonson is a VR interaction designer, and recent graduate of the MIT Media Lab, from the Fluid Interfaces group. He’s the inventor of Bird, a technique for controlling a point in 3D space with one hand.
Schedule
Day 1
Friday, April 22
16:00
Check-in
Keynote Opening
Sponsors Introduction
Harvard i-lab AR/VR facility Introduction
Hackathon Rule & Instruction
18:00
Dinner & Networking
Team Formation Activities
20:00
Team Enrollment & the Hack begins!
Day 2
Saturday, April 23
All Day
Hacking Day at i-Lab
In-Person and Virtual Workshops and Expert Office Hours are available
Video Tutorials
● Setting Up Unity
● Intro to Github
● Unity AR Setup
● Unity VR Setup
Virtual Workshops (More to be announced)
● Workshops: Intro XR MVPs
● Workshops: Intro to Unity
● Workshops: Intro to Unreal
● Workshops: Intro to AR
● Workshops: Intro to VR
● Workshops: Unity Design
● Workshops: Unity Development
Expert Office Hours (More to be announced)
Experts from Meta, SoWork, XR Terra, Axon Park, Manta Network, Big Rock XR, Owl Capital, and many more to come
Day 3
Sunday, April 24
09:00
Hacking Day at i-Labs
(In-Person and Virtual Workshops and Expert Office Hours)
12:00
Submission Due
Initial Round Judging in progress and Finalists will be announced at 3 pm
15:00
Finalist Announcement
Panel Discussions
16:00
Finalist Showcase & Judging
Winner Announcement & Closing Ceremony
Sponsors
Our
Team
Yun Fan
Co-Lead, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Nemo Shi
Co-Lead, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Amy Chiu
Fellow, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Christian Mitsch
Fellow, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Jessie Pan
Fellow, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Xiaohan Yang
Fellow, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Gabriela Torres
Fellow, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Melissa Dearborn
Fellow, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
Meitong Li
Fellow, Harvard i-lab XR & Metaverse Founder Community
The
Venue
FULL ADDRESS:
Harvard Innovation Labs
Batten Hall, 125 Western Ave, Allston, MA 02134
