By Jennifer K. Morita

March 12, 2025

More than 100 students hacked into real-world problems to come up with innovative solutions during Hornet Hacks at Sacramento State’s Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The artificial intelligence hackathon kicked off Feb. 28 with a day of team building at the Carlsen Center before students spent a week collaborating on solutions to problems in the fields of education, finance, health care and sustainability.

Hornet Hacks aims to give students a platform to demonstrate their skills, creativity and vision in AI.

The competition started last spring to encourage students with a passion for hacking to work collaboratively to develop solutions to problems using AI.

“This is our third hackathon, and it’s been really valuable for spurring student activity to build things and providing that creative outlet,” said Cameron Law, Carlsen Center executive director.

Seventeen teams presented their solutions and creations to a panel of judges on March 7. The winners are:

• Overall: Diversity Hires for its Augmentative and Alternative Communication device built for Gestalt Language Processors
• Education: Diversity Hires also for its Augmentative and Alternative Communication device built for Gestalt Language Processors
• Health care: NeuroVision for its cloud-based, AI-powered MRI analysis tool that provides real-time tumor detection and visualization
• Sustainability: Nitre-Op for its hardware and software solution focused on nitrogen fertilizer optimization to prevent runoff
• Finance: Thrive, an AI-powered affordable housing solution

Teams included students from the colleges of Engineering and Computer Science, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and the College of Business. Cash prizes ranged from $500 to $1,000.

The hackathon event is organized each semester by the Carlsen Center as well as students Ajaydeep Singh and Harmanjot Singh from the Association for Computing Machinery at Sac State, and Hornet Hacks.

Last year, one of the teams won second place in the Sunstone CSU Startup Launch Competition.

“So it’s been a great feeder for our entrepreneurial activities because they’re building things and doing a lot of that early stage work,” Law said.

To learn more about the Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, visit their webpage.