The 2026 Xiaohongshu Hackathon Peak Competition, hosted by Xiaohongshu, successfully concluded in April. A student team from ShanghaiTech University’s GeekPie and DataTech clubs stood out in the software track with their project, “ChicChic—When Haircutting Meets Token Limits,” clinching the First Prize.
Award ceremony. ShanghaiTech club members He Zebang (second from left) and Hong Mutian (first from right) accept the honor.
As the inaugural hackathon organized by Xiaohongshu, the event attracted a massive following from universities and industry developers nationwide, with Gen Z participants (born after 2000) accounting for over 62% of the field. During the 48-hour extreme challenge, teams were required to complete the entire development cycle—from initial concept to a minimum viable product (MVP). Following a comprehensive review by expert judges, the top five teams from both the software and hardware tracks advanced to the finals for a live roadshow.
Moment of triumph. The ShanghaiTech team strikes the ceremonial drum to mark the end of the 48-hour development marathon.
Hackathon, a portmanteau of “Hacker” and “Marathon,” has evolved into a globally influential competition format. It demands not only exceptional programming skills but also the ability to materialize creative ideas, collaborate effectively, and build functional prototypes under intense time pressure. It has become a premier stage for young tech talents to showcase their innovation and teamwork.
The ShanghaiTech’s project addresses a common pain point in daily life: the inefficiency of communicating with barbers. The team sought to find a high-efficiency communication way between users and stylists through technology.
During development, He Zebang, former president of GeekPie, integrated his expertise in full-stack development and high-performance computing to manage the backend architecture, workflow construction, and cluster management. Meanwhile, Hong Mutian ’26, president of DataTech, leveraged his data science specialty to achieve rapid development and deployment of hair reconstruction algorithms and intelligent recommendation systems. Their cross-domain collaboration perfectly exemplifies the engineering excellence and innovative spirit of ShanghaiTech students.
Software track First Prize winner “Chic Chic.”
Users can transform their imagination into realistic style previews.
This success is part of a long-standing tradition. As early as 2016, GeekPie founder Lü Wentao and his teammates achieved high rankings in major competitions. DataTech, incubated from the data science branch of GeekPie and led by founder Hong Mutian ’26, has consistently won awards in prestigious data science competitions like Kaggle.
Supported by ShanghaiTech’s resources, GeekPie and DataTech can flexibly schedule high-performance computing equipment to support research and competitions. For this hackathon, the team fully utilized the university’s computing capabilityto build a complete workflow, from hair modeling to style transfer, laying the technical foundation for their high-quality final product.