If you’ve ever wondered what happens when over 200 college students spend a weekend creating solutions to real-world problems, the answer is: chaos, creativity, and some truly innovative ideas. During the weekend of October 24-26, the Skandalaris Center and Hack WashU transformed Simon Hall into a buzzing innovation hub for the Fall 2025 WashU Hackathon. True to the Skandalaris Center’s mission, the event brought together students from across campus, including participants from each school, proving once again that the best ideas and solutions happen with cross-collaboration and an interdisciplinary mindset.
Hackathon participants had the opportunity to participate in one of two tracks over the weekend: the Skandalaris AI Track or the Hack WashU Code Agnostic Track. Prompts were presented for each before students formed teams and declared which prompt they would be working on for the weekend. The resulting solutions span from an AI DJ to a mental health app and everything in between.
The prompts:
AI Track: Make a solution that brings people and AI together to improve lives, advance discovery, or strengthen communities.
Code-Agnostic Track: Create an experience that promotes calmness and peace of mind.
“At the Skandalaris Center, we believe the best ideas happen when people and technology create together,” said Skandalaris Center Managing Director II Luscri. “This hackathon embodies that spirit, bringing bold thinkers, builders, and dreamers together to explore how AI can strengthen communities, spark discovery, and improve lives.”
Forty-four AI teams and 16 code-agnostic teams formed on Friday evening and immediately went to work. Between brainstorming sessions and caffeine runs, hackers leveled up their skills through an exciting lineup of workshops:
- “How People and AI Can Work Together” led by Michelle Hamilton from Spark AI
- “Building Agentic AI” led by Kelsey Emnett from Allstate
- “AI in Healthcare” led by Brittaney Bethea from Inspire Communications Solutions
- “Finding Product-Market Fit” and “Mayfield’s VC Philosophy” led by Irving Hsu from Mayfield
Expert mentors Patrick Aguilar, Shani Bennett, Amit Bhagat, Kelsey Emnett, Talia Goldfarb, Michelle Hamilton, Cheryl Liu, Suchandan Pal, and Finnegan Stewart were also available on Saturday for teams to consult and receive feedback as they worked to develop their solutions.
On Sunday morning, after very little sleep and a lot of caffeine, teams submitted their final projects for review by our panel of judges. Franklin Taylor (MBA ‘24), Chiara Munzi (BA ‘23), Michelle Hamilton, and Blake Marggraff (BA ‘15), served as the AI track’s first-round judges, with Irving Hsu, Amit Kothari, and Mark Munsell serving as final-round judges to decide the top AI prizes. Adith Jagadish Boloor, Shin Leong, Luiz Ludwig, Sophia Dykstra (BS ‘24, MS ‘25), Bill Siever, Jack Heuberger (BE ‘23, MS ‘24), and Ilan Goodman served as judges for the Code-Agnostic track. After much deliberation, scores were tallied, and winners were announced at a closing reception on Sunday afternoon.
And the winners are…
The AI track was all about finding that sweet spot between human empathy and machine intelligence, and the teams didn’t disappoint. Congratulations to the following teams:
$2,000 Grand Prize: Newby – An AI DJ that with endless hardware applications.
Mahir Bansal (LA ‘29), Ben Cook (EN ‘26), Shane Dell (BU ‘29), Jonas Kim (EN ‘29), Jesse Myoung (EN ‘25, MS ‘27)
$1,500: EUNO – Palantir for optimizing mental health
Andrew Baggio (EN ‘26), Jack Belmont (EN ‘26), Brent Pennington (BU ‘26), Dung Pham (EN ‘26), Rey Yu (BU ‘26)
$1,000: IGNS – Multi-agent agricultural data
Henry Ye (LA ‘28) and Ines Nix (EN ‘26)
$1,000: SmartTax
Aaron Gao (LA ’28) and Mingze Zhao (EN ’28)
$750: Binary Brains
Aman Verma (MS ‘26) and Mehak Sharma (MS ‘25)
$750: The Big Brain
Evan Tan (MS ‘26), Joe Hess (LA ‘27), Hamasa Ebadi (PhD ‘28)
$500: Significant People
ZhaoHua Zheng (EN ‘26), Deyu Zhang (LA ‘26), Mark Song (LA ‘26)
$500: Head On
Ashutosh Deorukhkar (MS ‘26), Tiffany Chan (EN ‘26), Rui Zhang (BU ‘22), Aurora Peng (MSSCM ‘25)
In the Code-Agnostic track, participants proved that sometimes peace of mind sometimes doesn’t require a line of code. Hack WashU selected the following winners:
$2,000 Grand Prize: PomoPatch
$1,000:RephraseIt
$1,000: Good-News-VR
$750: Grata-Tree
$750: The Coffee Cats
$750: Mood Forecast
$500: Calm Type
“The Skandalaris WashU Hackathon captures what makes this university special,” remarked Skandalaris Associate Director Adam Wilson. “When students from every discipline come together to imagine what’s possible with AI, not just as technologists, but as artists, researchers, and problem solvers, you can feel the energy of what’s next.”
It was a dynamic weekend filled with energy and ideas, and we cannot wait to see how the concepts created over this 36-hour hackathon continue to grow and develop over time.