Apply Now For Mentorship Opportunities in the 2022 China-US Young Maker Challenge

Hackster has launched our student mentorship program dedicated to supporting US-based passionate engineers as they create submissions in this year's China-US Young Maker Competition.

As the administrator of the China-US Young Maker's Challenge for the 7th year, we have seen a generation of hardware engineers' personal and professional journey propelled by our global community and open platform that enabled them to showcase their projects and charge up their engineering skills.

To advance our mission of empowering future generations through our community network and ecosystem, we designed this program to give contest participants exclusive opportunities to work with our curated list of professionals and Hackster superusers.

How the Mentorship Program Works

The Hackster mentorship program will bring past contest winners & Hackster superusers together with current participants of the 2022 China-US Young Maker Competition so experienced users can share their knowledge, skills, and stories. Mentors will meet with mentees for one-on-one conversations to give feedback on projects and advise on how to make the best submission possible in the current contest.

How You Can Beome a Mentee

You are eligible to become a mentee in this program if you are located in the US, participating in the current 2022 US-China Young Maker Challenge,and if you have an eligible entry. Apply by filling out the mentorship request form here and get quickly matched with a mentor by our contest team so you can make updates before contest deadline. This program is a great way to learn more from leading experts in engineering, build your professional network, and get feedback on your project to create an amazing submission for this contest.

Do you have an initial idea, prototype, or even working example of a project you're considering submitting to the 2022 US-China Young Maker Challenge? There's still time to submit a basic outline of your project concept, then work with a mentor to update your project up until the deadline.

Read more stories here from past contest participants and how this opportunity impacted their lives. Become one of the rising stars in the Hackster community!

Meet Our Rockstar Mentors

Our mentors are curated by our contest team and are either who have participated in and won previous contests on Hackster, as well as leading engineering and maker professionals who are the best fit to pass on their knowledge and skills to mentees. They are knowledgeable of how to best document engineering projects, as well as how to best show the story of a project to effectively connect a project and its purpose with judges.

Jen Fox: Jen makes things and teaches other folks to make things! After dabbling in dark matter (B.S Physics, Occidental College), Jen settled into engineering with a blend of inventing and teaching (M.S. Mech E, UCLA). In 2014, Jen founded Foxbot Industries to help bring making to the world, and in 2020 she joined Microsoft as a senior product manager to learn about, experiment with, and help drive maker-related efforts across the company.

Rob Lauer: Rob is the director of developer relations at Blues Wireless. He has a long history of web and mobile app development utilizing a variety of tools and frameworks and is also an avid writer. Rob's most popular project is his ML-Powered Speed Trap with nearly 25,000 views and he also has many engaging tutorials for Blues Wireless.

Mithun Das: A hacker and maker driven by passion, Mithun is a 13x Hackster contest winner and an ambassador at Edge Impulse and Balena. He is currently a distinguished software engineer at Cox Automotive. Mithun was a grand prize winner in the 2021 China-US Young Maker Competition with his "Protect Peatlands for people and planet with help of SensiML" project.

Paul Langdon: Paul is a Hackster Ambassador from Wethersfield, Connecticut, a 2x Hackster contest winner, and the Director of Cloud Architecture at Savant Power. Paul is also an Arm Innovator and Intel Software Innovator who actively participates in tech communities with over 20 years of engineering experience in the financial, healthcare, and IoT markets. His "Innovation Think" series is also a great resource to learn more about IoT and hardware topics.

Ron Dagdag: Ron is a 7x Hackster contest winner, the Director of Software Engineering at Spacee, Inc., an active Hackster Ambassador who runs the Hackster Dallas meetup, and has won awards in many contests on Hackster including being in the top 10 participants of the Arduino / Distrelec: Automation & Robotics Contest with his "Accessibility Controls for Droids" project.

Irak Vicarte Mayer: A maker by heart and technological activist by choice. Irak has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering focused on cybersecurity, camera device drivers, image processing, robotics, neural networks, and blockchain. He mentors his daughters in VEX robotics and IoT projects and is eager to help and share his experiences with other fellow young makers. His team won an award for creating the most 'fun' project, the "GloMusic", in the Voice AI Hardware Challenge with Matrix Labs and Snips.