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COMING UP

Newark Tech Week
(Oct 14 - Oct 18)

SF Open Source AI Week
(Oct 18 - Oct 26)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[ SF Open Source AI Week ]
Popular Event 
With Rorry Brenner (Perforated AI), Mohammad Bakir (Weights & Biases), Arisa Ueno (DraperU Ventures).
Frontier Tower, 995 Market St, San Francisco
Oct 23 (Thu) , 2025 @ 06:30 PM
FREE
 
Register
 
 

 
DETAILS

Do you work with PyTorch? Would you like to have smarter, smaller, cheaper ML models? Would you like to have them today rather than next year? Then join us for Perforated AI's second Dendritic Optimization Hackathon as a part of Open Source Week!

Neuroscience has come a long way since the artificial neuron was first invented in 1943. In 2012 researchers discovered that this original design was missing something important, the additional computation happening within biological dendrites. This hackathon is an opportunity to use Perforated AI's open source repository to add artificial dendrites to your own PyTorch projects. Empowering them to be even more powerful on the same datasets.

Mandatory for Participation: Bring a project with you! This is not a typical hackathon where you build something from scratch. You will be applying Dendritic Optimization. When you walk in the door you should already have a functional PyTorch project you want to improve.

Case Studies Track:

1st place - $3000

2nd place - $2000

3rd place - $1000

This track is for those who just want to share their story with us. Apply this method to any project you're working on & let us tell the world what you built! Winners will be chosen based on accuracy & compression improvements achieved & prevalence of the model & dataset.

Hackathon Inception:

$500 - Unlimited winners!

Are you participating because you love hackathons? Well, why not use our tech to participate in a second hackathon? Get top three in any other qualifying hackathon with Dendritic Optimization & we'll top off your prize with an extra bonus.

Schedule:

October 23rd

6:30: Welcome / Networking

7: Dinner & Presentation on Dendritic Optimization

7:30: Dendritic Optimization Implementation Walkthrough

7:45: Weights & Biases Hyperparameter Sweeps Implementation Walkthrough

8: Hacking

10:45: Closeout

October 24rd - January 4th

Experiments! The hackathon day is just to get the initial system implemented. You shouldn't have to do any more coding at this point, but you do have to actually run the sweeps.

January 5th

Final due date for project submissions

January 8th

The hackathon wrap-up will be entirely online to support everyone coming in from out of town for the PyTorch conference. This will be a one hour session to discuss top projects & award prizes for the winners.

Judges:

Rorry Brenner - Perforated AI

Mohammad Bakir - Weights & Biases

Arisa Chelsea Ueno - DraperU Ventures

Additional details here.
 
 
 
 
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