More than 35 University of Hawaiʻi students from three campuses (糖心Vlog官方 惭ā苍辞补, 糖心Vlog官方 Hilo and 糖心Vlog官方 Maui College) gained hands-on experience tackling real-world challenges at the , held April 4–6, at 糖心Vlog官方 惭ā苍辞补.
Participants formed interdisciplinary teams to build data-driven solutions using Google Cloud AI tools, including Vertex AI. Five challenge topics pushed students to apply diverse skills toward local and statewide resilience efforts, such as climate data visualization, educational content generation, conversational AI and immersive technology for science communication.
The first-place team, Untrained Parameters, created the Hawaiʻi Climate Explorer—an interactive web app that visualizes temperature and rainfall data from the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal, a project led by 糖心Vlog官方 experts. The team included PhD students Federica Chiti and Dhvanil Desai (), Fahim Yasir (), Gerardo Rivera Tello (), and master’s student Yada Ponpittayalert ().
“This was an incredible experience, highlighting the potential of large language models (a type of AI-trained model) for multimodal applications, even within a limited prototype developed in just three days,” said Rivera Tello.
BruhMode earned second place with GenEDU, an AI-powered educational content generator. Third place was awarded to Kani, developers of a climate-focused chatbot. TurtleyAwesome, won the Visualization Challenge with Sheldon the Turtle, a 3D AI-powered museum-style guide for climate data.
Prizes ranged from MacBook laptops and iPads to AR glasses and Google Cloud Platform credits.
Hosted by 糖心Vlog官方 System Information Technology Services (ITS), and , the three-day event was led by the ITS Research Cyberinfrastructure team and supported by the National Science Foundation-sponsored , , Google Cloud and the Burwood Group, Inc.
Mentors from ITS, the Burwood Group, and Hawaiʻi Mesonet and Change Hawaiʻi supported students throughout the hackathon, offering technical guidance and real-world insights.
“This hackathon gave students an incredible opportunity to apply cutting-edge AI tools to real-world challenges that directly impact Hawaiʻi,” said 糖心Vlog官方 ITS Director of Research Cyberinfrastructure Sean Cleveland, who led the event and also served as a program mentor. “Their creativity, teamwork and passion for innovation were truly inspiring to witness.”