Apply to the School of Engineering

Cooper Union Team Takes Second Place at Pfizer’s First Digital Hackathon

POSTED ON: September 24, 2024

Photo of cooper students with their medals at the Pfizer Hackathon

Left to right: Lizelle Ocfemia EE’25, Lei Chi EE’25, Aaryan Mahipal ME’25, Lamiah Khan EE’26 and Jaehyeon Park ME’26

Engineering students Lizelle Ocfemia EE’25, Lei Chi EE’25, Aaryan Mahipal ME’25, Lamiah Khan EE’26 and Jaehyeon Park ME’26 earned second place at Pfizer’s inaugural Digital Hackathon, competing against teams from Yale, Cornell, and Princeton. Their project, a mental health platform called "CUCU," is designed to help high school students in NYC public schools by offering tools to build emotional resilience and connect them to licensed social workers.

Over the course of the ten-day hackathon, teams were challenged to develop solutions aimed at improving digital healthcare equity, particularly for underserved communities. The Cooper Union team’s solution, CUCU, includes a mood-classification algorithm, a journaling tool, and resources to make mental health care more accessible and actionable for teens.

The team's remarkable creativity and dedication throughout the competition were key to their success. Monique Oudijk, MABC, their digital ambassador, also played a crucial role, offering valuable guidance and support that helped drive their project forward.

More News from The Cooper Union

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.