Alumnus Maher Khan created a smart chat bot with his team at the inaugural IBM Bluehack, hosted by the University of Pittsburgh Innovation Institute. The project earned third place for the team.

Khan, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar in 2017 with dual degrees in computer science and information systems, is now a PhD student in computer science at University of Pittsburgh.

“I love hackathons. For me they are like a hobby,” said Khan in an article by the Innovation Institute.

The IBM Bluehack competition challenged participants to transform data into solutions to problems, and teams worked through the night to code a solution and develop a pitch. Khan and his team built their idea on IBM’s Watson AI platform. They plan to take the idea to the Yale University Yhack competition later this year.