Andrew Kim, 22
The Curiosity-Driven Builder: Trading Rigid Expectations for Creative Freedom
For Andrew Kim, the most transformative breakthroughs occur when curiosity is given complete room to wander. Long before stepping onto the campus of Virginia Tech, his deep love for technology was fueled by sheer curiosity and hands-on experimentation - crafting custom Minecraft mods and tinkering with LEGO robotics. For Andrew, coding was never about rigid lectures or memorizing syntax; it was an open canvas for personal projects and creative problem-solving. As Andrew reflects, “Hackathons reignited my passion in the field as they gave me an opportunity to make something I actually wanted to work on, with full creative control.”
Teaming up with his roommate during his freshman year, Andrew attended his first hackathon, VTHacks X. Stepping into the venue with zero prior experience in high-speed project development, the environment felt intimidating at first. As Andrew recalls, “[I had] no experience building something in such a concentrated time period. It was very daunting, but very very fun and definitely a core memory for me in college.” While the project they submitted wasn't perfect, they embraced the weekend as a low-pressure sandbox to learn web frameworks and APIs on the fly. That lighthearted humor and creative spirit caught the attention of recruiters representing J.B. Hunt, who were so impressed that they offered both roommates summer software engineering internships on the spot. That single weekend was a double whammy of career milestones - allowing Andrew to complete his very first hackathon and land his first software engineering internship all at once. More importantly, it served as early proof that real value, personal growth, and career opportunities at hackathons don't just come from winning prizes, but from showing up, exploring, and having the courage to build.
Over the course of a dozen hackathons, Andrew embraced these fast-paced weekend events as the ultimate hands-on complement to his degree, accumulating seven competitive wins along the way. “Being able to literally make whatever I wanted was so fun,” Andrew shares, noting how hackathons gave him total freedom to master new technology stacks at his own speed while solving real problems.
One of Andrew’s proudest moments was achieved at University of Virginia (UVA)'s HooHacks 2024. His team built 3Dera - an ambitious educational virtual reality platform. Users could enter a prompt for any well-documented historical event and it would dynamically generate a 3D environment that users can step directly into using VR. This was the team's first time working with Blender and Hugging Face and they navigated it to great success. But when the winners were announced for their track, their names were not called. “We were so bummed out because of how much work we had put into that project. We just sat there in silence until they finally got to the best overall category, and NONE of us thought we were going to win. When they announced our names we literally jumped up in shock.” 3Dera took home Best Overall. As Andrew reflects, this project became “one of my favorite accomplishments as a CS student.”
That spirit of collaborative innovation reached a fitting capstone during his senior year at HackViolet 2026. Teaming up with fellow MLH Top 50 Hacker Hannah Nguyen, Andrew helped create Learnspace - a web application and Chrome extension leveraging the Snowflake API to transform bookmarked content into an AI-powered learning system, taking home top track honors. “I remember the MLH representative at the hackathon [...] along with other students said it was something they would actually use, and that was incredibly rewarding to hear,” Andrew recounts. “One of my favorite things is when other people see the vision behind our project's ideas, especially if it's a novel idea that we spent a lot of time crafting together as a team.”
Having graduated from Virginia Tech in the spring of 2026, Andrew leaves behind a powerful blueprint for incoming hackers. His journey is proof that when you trade rigid expectations for creative freedom, a genuine passion for tinkering can spark a lifelong career.
Quick Facts
Andrew Kim, 22
The Curiosity-Driven Builder: Trading Rigid Expectations for Creative Freedom
For Andrew Kim, the most transformative breakthroughs occur when curiosity is given complete room to wander. Long before stepping onto the campus of Virginia Tech, his deep love for technology was fueled by sheer curiosity and hands-on experimentation - crafting custom Minecraft mods and tinkering with LEGO robotics. For Andrew, coding was never about rigid lectures or memorizing syntax; it was an open canvas for personal projects and creative problem-solving. As Andrew reflects, “Hackathons reignited my passion in the field as they gave me an opportunity to make something I actually wanted to work on, with full creative control.”
Teaming up with his roommate during his freshman year, Andrew attended his first hackathon, VTHacks X. Stepping into the venue with zero prior experience in high-speed project development, the environment felt intimidating at first. As Andrew recalls, “[I had] no experience building something in such a concentrated time period. It was very daunting, but very very fun and definitely a core memory for me in college.” While the project they submitted wasn't perfect, they embraced the weekend as a low-pressure sandbox to learn web frameworks and APIs on the fly. That lighthearted humor and creative spirit caught the attention of recruiters representing J.B. Hunt, who were so impressed that they offered both roommates summer software engineering internships on the spot. That single weekend was a double whammy of career milestones - allowing Andrew to complete his very first hackathon and land his first software engineering internship all at once. More importantly, it served as early proof that real value, personal growth, and career opportunities at hackathons don't just come from winning prizes, but from showing up, exploring, and having the courage to build.
Over the course of a dozen hackathons, Andrew embraced these fast-paced weekend events as the ultimate hands-on complement to his degree, accumulating seven competitive wins along the way. “Being able to literally make whatever I wanted was so fun,” Andrew shares, noting how hackathons gave him total freedom to master new technology stacks at his own speed while solving real problems.
One of Andrew’s proudest moments was achieved at University of Virginia (UVA)'s HooHacks 2024. His team built 3Dera - an ambitious educational virtual reality platform. Users could enter a prompt for any well-documented historical event and it would dynamically generate a 3D environment that users can step directly into using VR. This was the team's first time working with Blender and Hugging Face and they navigated it to great success. But when the winners were announced for their track, their names were not called. “We were so bummed out because of how much work we had put into that project. We just sat there in silence until they finally got to the best overall category, and NONE of us thought we were going to win. When they announced our names we literally jumped up in shock.” 3Dera took home Best Overall. As Andrew reflects, this project became “one of my favorite accomplishments as a CS student.”
That spirit of collaborative innovation reached a fitting capstone during his senior year at HackViolet 2026. Teaming up with fellow MLH Top 50 Hacker Hannah Nguyen, Andrew helped create Learnspace - a web application and Chrome extension leveraging the Snowflake API to transform bookmarked content into an AI-powered learning system, taking home top track honors. “I remember the MLH representative at the hackathon [...] along with other students said it was something they would actually use, and that was incredibly rewarding to hear,” Andrew recounts. “One of my favorite things is when other people see the vision behind our project's ideas, especially if it's a novel idea that we spent a lot of time crafting together as a team.”
Having graduated from Virginia Tech in the spring of 2026, Andrew leaves behind a powerful blueprint for incoming hackers. His journey is proof that when you trade rigid expectations for creative freedom, a genuine passion for tinkering can spark a lifelong career.
