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Mouad Tiahi started coding on a decades-old computer. Now he’s a 2025 Top 50 Hacker 

Mouad Tiahi's hackathon success stems not from a desire to win, but instead from his desire to find unique problems, solve them on a tight clock, and push the boundaries of high-performance computing.

January 15, 2026

by Yashavi Upasani

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This past September, Mouad Tiahi was named as one of Major League Hacking’s Top 50 Hackers of 2025, the first Northeastern student to make the list. While the accomplishment is impressive, it’s also no surprise considering Tiahi’s history of hackathon wins and the years he spent building his skills. 

The third-year computer science and physics combined major began his coding journey long before he started at Northeastern. He grew up just across the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his family’s only computer was an old box-like one from the 1980s. He eventually got the chance to borrow a Raspberry Pi from his elementary school, which he hooked up to his computer and created a version of Slither.io with his favorite animal, kangaroos. This sparked Tiahi’s love of code and computers, and he began spending hours in his school’s computer lab developing his craft. 

In high school, Tiahi started participating in programming competitions but left the scene after getting hooked on the creative nature of hackathons and the diversity of competitors he found here. 

“It’s very interdisciplinary. A lot of people have this misconception that if you go to a hackathon, you’re only there to code,” Tiahi said. “But now, there have been business majors who have been successful. There have been engineers, chemical engineering majors as well who have been successful. You don’t have to be specifically in computer science to compete.” 

But competition hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Tiahi. After being rejected from the first collegiate hackathon he applied to, he began applying to every hackathon he could, eventually going to his first, BostonHacks 2023, with no team and no idea what to do.  

“I didn’t know what to expect … I didn’t really know anybody,” Tiahi said. “I ended up teaming with three people who became friends of mine.” 

Since then, Tiahi has competed in countless hackathons, most recently winning the sustainability category of HackMIT 2025 after creating a power grid using batteries he and his team created from lead and fertilizer. Despite the thrill of winning big, he stresses that for him, it’s never about finishing first. 

“I approach [hackathons] in a way where I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re not here to win. We’re here to do something really cool. Let’s find a unique problem to solve,’” Tiahi said. “And then we play to everyone’s strength on the team.” 

Tiahi’s best such example was his final product at HackMIT 2024, where he and his teammates reverse-engineered an Xbox Kinect that allowed people with disabilities — specifically in their hands — to play. Tiahi got to see this in action when a four-fingered hackathon attendee used the sign-language-reading abilities his team created. Even though the team didn’t win, Tiahi found the experience incredibly rewarding.  

It’s his commitment to delivering the best, most efficient product possible that landed Tiahi on the Top 50 Hackers list. It’s also a catalyst for his own coding endeavors, where he aims for more ethical means of high-performance computing rather than sticking with traditional, less sustainable ways.  

Currently, Tiahi is taking a break from competing and is dedicating his time to mentoring other Northeastern students for hackathons. He has also worked for the past year as a high-performance computing assistant researcher with College of Engineering Distinguished Professor David Kaeli, which has fostered his interest in making computer science and AI more sustainable. 

“I want to use my knowledge in high-performance computing, in quantum computing, to develop sustainable solutions for these big tech data centers and just help out with the environmental costs and pushing the boundaries on that,” Tiahi said. “I just want to keep doing, keep learning.”