Hackademics Group
Hackademics is a multi-national non-profit organization that hosts programming competitions focusing on education as a theme. Hackademics aims to bring together developers to build meaningful educational software or mobile applications.
Tokyo Hackademics 2016 Organizing Team
Neil Nguyen-Huu, Co-Head of Sponsors
Neil is a passionate teacher and a student of technology. Neil earned a B.S. at the University of California where he studied Mechanical Engineering, focusing on product design and mechatronics. Neil’s first endeavor after college was to build robot control systems at Arcus-Technology in Livermore, California. In mid-2009, Neil joined some friends to build OneVietnam Network, an online fundraising platform for Vietnam-focused NPO’s in the US. In 2011, Neil enrolled in Tokyo University where he earned his M.A in Economics while founding Tokyo Academics. |
Duc Doba, Head of Hacker Experience
Duc is a software engineer at LINE Corp. He was a tech lead and team manager at Rakuten Inc. During 5 years working at Rakuten, he worked on many back-end services and has been the lead engineer in charge of core mobile apps. He is a Certified Scrum Master, contributing to Scrum adoption at Rakuten. Duc was the 9th president of Vietnamese Youth and Student Association in Japan and contributed to many charitable and cultural activities of Vietnamese people in Japan. He holds many awards and a patent in information technology. In 2014, he was the Google Award winner in the Code For Resilience Hackathon in Japan and his solution 'Anytime!' - A cooperative communication platform - was elected as one of 10 finalists in the global contest sponsored by World Bank in Washington DC. |
Stefan Badertscher, Head of Operations
Stefan became interested in Technology at age 12 after getting his first personal computer as a Christmas present and is passionate about it ever since. Stefan gained in depth cultural knowledge having spent considerable time across various countries in Europe (Italy, UK, Spain, Switzerland) and Japan, while studying Information Systems and Finance at the University of Tokyo. Being mainly based in Switzerland, Stefan invoked the passion for technology teaching different IT related subjects at Swiss high schools and also helped various large multinational organizations (finance and media) realizing their IT projects as Requirements Engineer / Business Analyst. Besides his interest in technology and culture / languages, Stefan spends his free time devouring books covering economic theories and investing. |
Adam Nguyen, Head of Advisory Board
Adam has held several positions at Rakuten Inc., the latest of which is Project Manager in the New Service Development Office, PMO Section, overseeing initiatives from the CEO. He also holds the youngest Board Member position for the Harvard Club of Japan where he plans events for alumni and is a member of the United States College Alumni Network of Japan where he supports events that encourages Japanese students to study abroad. Prior to coming to Japan, he also had work experiences in China, Vietnam, and the United States. In his spare time, he enjoys coding for data science in R, SQL, and Python. He holds an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University. |
Elias Voss, Co-Head of Sponsors
Elias is a passionate student of technology, especially in the field of programming, robotics, and IoT. When Elias is not learning about technical things, he spends time building a debate club and representing his team at international debate conferences. He is also an active contributor to the betterment of local communities in China, France, England, and Japan where he lived. Oh, and Elias is good at tennis. |
Rachael Fuchs, Operations
Rachael is currently a junior at the American School in Japan. She has previously had experience with programming at school and summer programs in languages such as HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Python, Java, and Swift. When Rachael is not programming, she spends time playing volleyball and competing on her school Varsity Team. She is a leader in Hands on Tokyo, which helps out the Tokyo and Tohoku regions. She is an avid singer, performing in the spring musical and Vocal Jazz Ensemble at her school. |
Joshua France, Operations
Joshua is a student at the American School in Japan. He is the captain of one of the school’s competition robotics teams, and has been involved with the robotics club for 4 years. Outside of robotics, he is a leader of the school’s Model United Nations team and is also involved with THIMUN: Online Model United Nations which is essentially Model United Nations but through an online platform. Joshua is also a Summer robotics teacher at an aerospace museum in upstate New York. He will be heading to Duke University next fall to study engineering. |