2026 USDA–CSU Student Hackathon Showcases Real World Innovation
On April 24–25, 2026, Colorado State University (CSU) hosted the Spring 2026 Undergraduate Hackathon at the Durrell Center on its Fort Collins campus. Organized primarily by the USDA, the annual event brought together more than 100 students for a fast‑paced weekend focused on solving real-world challenges through data, technology, and collaboration.
Industry and government partners played a key role in the event by providing access to software, cloud infrastructure, data, developer tools, and technical mentoring.
Event sponsors included USDA, NASA, AWS, Databricks, and Esri.
Kicking Off with Career Insights and Technical Enablement
The hackathon began Thursday evening with a career and information panel, where sponsors shared insights into their organizations, career paths, and how their work aligned with the event’s challenge themes. On Friday, sponsors engaged directly with students through information tables, conversations, and mentoring opportunities.
To help students prepare for the technical work, Esri and AWS delivered platform-focused sessions on Friday afternoon, highlighting tools and resources students could leverage as they developed their solutions.
The Challenge: From Data to Insight in 22 Hours
Students—each with at least basic experience in Python and R—were randomly assigned to teams of four or five. Teams were given just 22 hours to complete their projects, with many students opting to work overnight in shifts.
Teams selected one of two challenge prompts addressing common research and operational issues in the region:
- Land Use & Sustainability
Teams developed AI-powered solutions to classify land types and calculate land usage from satellite imagery and geographic boundaries, supporting greenhouse gas inventory modeling and sustainability reporting. - Agricultural Risk & Biosecurity
Teams designed tools to analyze international travel and cargo pathways to assess the risk of invasive fruit flies entering the United States, creating visualizations to inform early detection and surveillance strategies.
Participants worked with large, real-world datasets provided by sponsors, including harmonized NASA / USGS Landsat and Sentinel‑2 (HLS) imagery, USDA cropland data, cultural and physical boundary data, and precipitation and drought data from the Living Atlas and other regional sources.
Teams shared their results in a 5 minute lightning talk style presentation
Strong Results and Industry‑Judged Competition
Final projects were evaluated by an industry judging panel using sponsor-defined criteria. The competition was strong, with most teams successfully delivering complete, data-driven solutions. Teams demonstrated impressive results, including effective invasive species detection workflows and accurate crop yield analysis.
The event was supported by a dedicated group of volunteers and mentors, including:
- Members of the AWS Federal Civilian team
- Databricks data science and solutions engineering support for USDA
- USDA leadership and subject-matter experts
- A NASA scientist and advisor to the CAIO
- Esri solution engineers, account managers, and federal team members
The hackathon concluded Saturday evening with five-minute team presentations and an awards ceremony delivered to a packed room.
Industry sponsors acted as judges on the panel
Looking Ahead
Events like the USDA–CSU Student Hackathon highlight the power of collaboration between academia, industry, and government to prepare the next generation of geospatial and data professionals.
Interested in participating in future CSU hackathon events?
Employers are encouraged to contact career_employers@colostate.edu to learn more.
