CGU Upsilon Pi Epsilon Wins Major League Hacking Award at UCR DesignVerse

Katja Crusius, Varsha Shetty, Sonia Baron, and Joan Puteri Zheng secured a win at UC Riverside’s 2025 DesignVerse Major League Hacking (MLH) competition. The team competed in the second annual 24-hour design-a-thon hosted by Design at UCR and Women in Computing. This team with CGU UPE members managed this achievement while simultaneously navigating finals week at Claremont Graduate University!

During the fast-paced weekend, students prototyped and pitched digital solutions to real-world problems. This Claremont student team developed TrueNorth, an AI chatbot project investigating workplace engagement and turnover retention leveraging PERMA+4 literature and RAG technology. Their technical execution earned them the Major League Hacking award for Best Use of MongoDB Atlas.

The weekend competition aimed to make design thinking accessible while helping students build networks and technical confidence. By combining robust database infrastructure with generative AI capabilities, the TrueNorth team demonstrated how to successfully blend software engineering, strategic evaluation, and impactful design.

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DesignVerse 2025: 24 Hours of Ideas, Energy, and Collaboration. UC Riverside School of Business, University of California, Riverside, 15 Sept. 2025, business.ucr.edu/blog/2025/09/15/designverse-2025-24-hours-ideas-energy-and-collaboration.