Dongchan Kim, a Technology Systems Management major with a specialization in Computer Science who is currently studying at the Stony Brook University home campus in New York, has recently won the Final Grand Prize and the Meta Track Award in the MIT Reality Hack 2026 competition.
The MIT Reality Hack is the world’s premier XR hackathon hosted at the MIT Media Lab, where industry leaders like Meta, Google, and Qualcomm provide the latest hardware and high-level technical mentoring. The competition brings together more than 400 engineers and designers from around the world for three days of intensive, round-the-clock development.
Dongchan and his team developed SmartSight, a screen-free AI study coaching-solution that utilizes Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to automatically analyze learning patterns and provide personalized feedback.
The Meta Track Award specifically challenged participants to demonstrate the 'Best Use of the Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit' for hands-free everyday-use cases. As part of their awards experience, Dongchan and his teamnates were invited to visit the Meta Engineering Hub in Boston, where they engaged in deep discussions about the vision for his project. Most significantly, they received validation regarding their project's potential to evolve into an official partnership with Meta. This encouragement has been the driving force behind their current efforts to move beyond the prototype phase and accelerate the development of the project into a fully realized, professional service.
This June, Dongchan and his team will be traveling to California to present SmartSight at AWE USA 2026, the world’s leading XR and AI conference, as a Grand Prize Winner. Given that their project is the first-ever winner in the Meta Wearable category, they aim to showcase an enhanced version of SmartSight as they continue refining the platform into a professional, market-ready solution. Dongchan’s achievement highlights SUNY Korea students’ growing impact in emerging technologies and reinforces the university’s commitment to innovation, global collaboration, and experiential learning.
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