United AI Hackathon

Welcome to the United AI Hackathon, a 24-hour sprint where builders, designers, and thinkers come together to create meaningful AI-powered solutions across 7 challenge tracks.

Whether you're passionate about education, civic tech, sustainability, health, creativity, developer tooling, or productivity, there's a track for you. Projects can use any AI framework or model including Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, Hugging Face, and more, and will be judged on real-world impact, thoughtful AI integration, technical execution, and responsible design.

Tracks

  • Track 1: Productivity and Automation
  • Track 2: Education and Accessibility
  • Track 3: Health and Wellbeing
  • Track 4: Developer Tools and Infra
  • Track 5: Creative and Generative
  • Track 6: Environment and Sustainability
  • Track 7: Civic Tech and Social Change

When and Where Location: Link 369 Dates: Saturday, March 28 to Sunday, March 29

Schedule

  • 10:00 AM: Registration opens
  • 11:00 AM: Opening and briefing ceremony
  • 12:00 PM: Hacking begins
  • Sunday 12:00 PM: Submission deadline
  • Sunday 1:00 PM: Judging

Prizes 1st Place: $750 2nd Place: $500 3rd Place: $250

 

Teams of 1 to 5. Register on Devpost, build something impactful, and ship it in 24 hours.

Requirements

Submission Requirements

All teams must submit their project via Devpost by Sunday, March 29 at 12:00 PM. Your submission must include:

  1. Project name and description (max 300 words)
  2. Track selection
  3. GitHub repository link (must be public at submission time)
  4. Live demo link (optional but encouraged: Hugging Face Spaces, Vercel, Replit, etc.)
  5. Deck/slides (optional, max 5 slides)
  6. All team members listed with Devpost profiles

 

Your final GitHub commit must be made before the submission deadline, and your repository must be shared at the start of the hackathon. Repository naming convention: [track-code]-[team-name] (e.g. track2-learnbot, track4-promptlens).

Eligibility Requirements

  • You must be a currently enrolled Syracuse University student to participate.
  • You must be present in person at Link 369 during all posted registration, orientation, and judging times on Saturday and Sunday.
  • Organizers reserve the right to verify eligibility at any point and remove participants who do not meet these requirements, including after registration and after submission.
  • Participants who are found to be ineligible will be disqualified from prizes and removed from the event.
  • By submitting a project, you confirm that all team members meet the eligibility requirements above.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$1,500 in prizes
1st Place
$750 in cash
1 winner

2nd Place
$500 in cash
1 winner

3rd Place
$250 in cash
1 winner

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Judging Criteria

  • Impact, Problem & Track Clarity/Alignment
    Is the problem real and meaningful? Does the solution address it well? Does it relate to its associated track?
  • AI Integration Quality
    Is AI used thoughtfully as a core component, not just bolted on? Does the choice of model/tool fit the problem?
  • Technical Execution
    Does it work? Is the code quality reasonable for a hackathon?
  • User Experience / Presentation
    Is the demo/presentation intuitive and polished? Would a non-technical person understand it?
  • Innovation & Creativity
    Is the idea novel? Does it push the boundaries of what AI can do?
  • Responsible AI
    Does the project handle safety, transparency, and limitations thoughtfully?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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