18 September 2026 CV Raman Block & ALC Round-Table Rooms, SRM University AP

STRANGER STRINGS – 12-Hour Internal Hackathon

STRANGER STRINGS is a freshers-only overnight collaborative coding experience for first-year undergraduate students of SRM University-AP. The event runs from 4:00 PM on September 18 to 7:30 AM the next morning, with a 10-hour overnight hackathon, a technical workshop, team verification, a locked problem statement revealed on-site, and technical evaluation. Teams of 3–4 freshers will work through two development phases, with the final code freeze at 6:30 AM.

Key Takeaways

Strictly for 1st-year undergraduate students (freshers) of SRM University-AP
Teams of 3–4 participants, with a maximum of 30 teams / 120 participants
10-hour overnight coding sprint from 10:00 PM to 6:30 AM
Foundational workshop: Beyond Chatbots: Models, Prompting & the Next Wave of AI, 5:30–7:00 PM
Problem statement revealed on-site at 9:15 PM; prior proprietary codebases are prohibited
Two development phases covering architecture, algorithms, implementation, and stability
Absolute code freeze at 6:30 AM followed by technical evaluation and wrap-up
Evaluation based on architectural integrity, algorithmic efficiency, code hygiene, and technical defense
Prize pool of ₹10,000
Registration fee of ₹150 per participant