SciSearch

Our Logo

Inspiration

Growing up in a small town, my school didn’t start computer science until I was a senior in high school. This meant we didn’t have access to the tech opportunities and projects like other people since we were just starting and being an Asian female, I wasn't shown many. Projects and experience are vital to Computer Science education. We created this product because we would have loved something like this in high school. We hope this website can increase interest in Computer Science.

What it does

SciSearch provides users with information about Computer Science opportunities, like hackathons, internships, classes, or jobs, around them.

How we built it

SciSearch was built using HTML, JavaScript, ArcGIS, and Firebox. HTML and JavaScript were for the front-end and back-end development respectively, ArcGIS was used for the map features, and Firebox was used to launch our app.

Challenges we ran into

There were a lot of challenges for us. First was finding a database to use, however we realized we were making our product because there were no databases or even websites like ours. This meant, we had to make one which none of us had ever had to do. Another challenge we had was figuring out which APIs to use and how to use them. We knew since we were doing a location based project, ArcGIS was a no brainer. We selected it for it’s built in map features. We also decided to use Firebase to launch our website. These were challenges for us because none of us had ever used these APIs and had to learn them from scratch.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the design, map feature, and functionality of our website. All of these elements had many challenges that we worked together to overcome. We are also proud of how much we have learned throughout TreeHacks.

What we learned

We learned a lot. Given that we were all beginners, we were faced with the reality of what a hackathon is. This was our first time creating an HTML website that used JavaScript within it. Timing and feasibility were things we had to learn very quickly. We were able to learn a lot about the real-life application of things we learned in classes like databases and APIs. Hopefully, SciSearch can one day help someone else like us learn more than we did here.

What's next for SciSearch

SciSearch has lots of room to grow. In the future, we hope to use more API's to increase the amount of opportunities provided on SciSearch. Hopefully one day, we can also accept opportunities from users as well.