Williams students’ Hackathon reached students around the world

August 27, 2026 · 0 Comments

More than 340 students from over 50 countries came together online this month for a 40-hour hackathon hosted virtually by two local students.

The NGN Hacks event was the brainchild of Hanif Tajalli and Amirali Zhian, two Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School students who will be entering Grade 12 this fall.

NGN – Next Generation Hacks – hosted their hackathon from August 7 – 9.

Through the event, students built projects addressing a variety of issues facing our world today, such as education, health, Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, sustainability, finance, and more. It also entailed 10 free educational workshops covering everything from web development to machine learning, and keynote speeches from Raffi Krikorian, CTO of Mozilla, entrepreneur Daniel Martinez, and representatives from Lyft, PayPal, Microsoft, Motorola Solutions, and Lucid Motors amongst the judging panel.

Hanif and Amirali brainstormed the hackathon idea at the Aurora Public Library, initially conceiving it as an in-person event to help Aurora students create something meaningful for their portfolios. Eventually, however, they shifted the event online, opening it up to students far beyond the local high schools.

“Originally it was a local idea, but as it went on, we realized we had the potential for something way bigger,” says Amirali. “We wanted high school students all across the world to have free and accessible hands-on STEM education. At the start, we weren’t really thinking about goals, we just wanted to get as many participants as we could, have some impact, help some students, and have as many projects as possible. That’s how the community is built and the whole goal of the hackathon.”

The community certainly responded.

Hanif says in the first months of registration, they got 100 registrations. Things hit their stride, however, in the head up to August.

“You have to have a passion for something,” he says. “If we did this in the first three months and we saw barely any impact, barley any participants in those first three months, we probably would have quit if we had no passion. We did this because we actually found joy in this, that’s what got us to push further, and that’s what got us all the participants and the impact that we actually made.”

This passion will extend into the school year ahead as they continue to build NGN within the Williams, Aurora, and broader York Region communities.

They hope to have another hackathon bringing in a breadth of local students and host more in-person and hands-on workshops.

“You can easily learn technology by building a project and it’s the best way to learn,” says Amirali of the importance of these hands-on sessions. “If you can watch a whole YouTube video on how to code an application and don’t even open the code editor and start working on it, then there is no way you can finish the application. What I feel interests a lot of people younger than us, especially, is we kind of have our life planned out after high school. Now that we’re going into Grade 12, we kind of have to, but younger people don’t and what interests them are the projects.

“The projects are interesting because it reflects their own personality, it reflects what they are interested in, they can build whatever they want, and solve any problems they want. It comes into their creativity and what they can build.”

Looking back on the hackathon, Hanif and Amirali say they couldn’t have built what they did without their first sponsor, the Town of Aurora, giving them a bedrock of support, the industry professionals who helped them along the way, and, in turn, the enthusiasm event participants brought to the table.

“What matters is students who participated in our hackathon went from, ‘How do I build a project? Where do I start?’ having no idea where to start, to finishing the hackathon with a project submitted and something they can be proud of,” says Amirali. “Obviously, it’s a hard thing to do to come up with an idea, be creative, and have something that reflects your own profile as well. I think I’m most proud of that, helping students, and making hands-on-STEM education free globally.”

WINNERS OF AUGUST’S HACKATHON WERE:

1^st Place – Distill

2^nd Place – Expoplanet Hunter

3^rd Place – Aphasia Bridge

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter