Record participation in the School of Engineering's Hackathon
Some 350 students—the highest number of participants of all editions— took part on 7 and 8 November in the fifth edition of the hackathon, UAB THE HACK, held at the UAB School of Engineering. For 32 consecutive hours they had to find technological solutions to the challenges posed by Deloitte and Estrella Damm, as well as by the UAB Physical Activity Service and the School of Engineering.
Data, cybersecurity and large language models (LLM) are areas related to the technological challenges that were posed by the companies.
The UAB School of Engineering organised the fifth edition of the UAB THE HACK! hackathon on the weekend of 7 and 8 November, which broke the participation record (around 350 students). In this event, students (mostly from the UAB, but also from other universities and educational institutions) had to work together in teams to solve real technological challenges proposed by various companies or entities, which this year were Deloitte, Estrella Damm, the UAB Servei d’Activitat Física (SAF) and the UAB School of Engineering.
With the aim of fostering a culture of innovation and connecting UAB talent with the professional world, participants took part in workshops and activities throughout the weekend, set within a gamified, themed environment (in the previous edition the theme was pirates, while this year it was a space mission).
The event began on Saturday 7 November at 8:00 a.m. and concluded on Sunday 8 November at 3:00 p.m. The director of the Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia, Laura Caballero, and the director of the School of Engineering, Ian Blanes, welcomed the participants.
In total, participants enjoyed almost 32 hours of learning and creativity, with a full technological immersion. The participants were divided into teams of three or four people and had a total of twenty expert mentors who were there to advise them. The organisation only asked them to bring a laptop with a charger and a sleeping bag, and provided them with food and drinks, Wi-Fi, meeting rooms, and a space to sleep and rest.
Technological challenges and winning teams
The challenges for companies in this edition were related to areas such as data, cybersecurity, and large language models (LLMs).
In the challenge proposed by the UAs SAF, the team AGM2026 (composed of Ariel Liao Qiu, Guillem Canals i Sabaté, and Marc Capillas, Computer Engineering students at the UAB) designed Saffi, an assistant that tells you where and when there's space at the SAF facilities, organising the week according to each person's schedule, and drafting reports for the SAF, always using real data and indicating the source of each figure.
In the challenge proposed by the UAB School of Engineering, the winning team was PHP Warriors (made up of Joan Pérez Baltrons, Jordi Toscano Parera, Pol Comerma and Lua Trevin Hernaiz). The team generated the timetables for the School’s new shifts using a logic solver and verified them with an official checker. Furthermore, it created an AI assistant that answers inquiries and reschedules classes when unforeseen issues arise, as well as a website featuring the Q building in 3D.
For the Deloitte challenge, the Puente 4 team (made up of Alejandro Rodríguez Collado, Nil Babot Rodriguez, Joan Aranda Bocanegra, and Xavier Roman Gutierrez) automated the first tier of a cybersecurity operations centre, using various AI agents that analyse each alert in about 18 seconds, rather than the 15 minutes it would otherwise take.
And for the Damm company challenge, proposed by its Human Resources Department, the Damm Lemon team was declared the winner (made up of Jan Peix Iglesias, Carles Peiró Vega, Phoebe Iglesias Cividanes, and Joan Marc Samó Rojas, all students from the School of Engineering), which created People Damm, a platform where factory, logistics, sales, and office staff can express their opinions. The students used AI to develop a system consisting of a short anonymous survey that can be answered on a mobile phone in less than a minute.
UAB THE HACK! began in May 2024 as the first hackathon of the UAB, which has grown with each edition thanks to the interest of many students and companies.
For more information please visit: https://uabthehack.cat/