NEWARK, Del. - More than 40 college and high school students spent three days developing artificial intelligence and machine learning tools aimed at solving problems faced by Delaware government.
The Hennovate the State hackathon, held Aug. 17-19 at the University of Delaware's STAR Campus FinTech Innovation Hub, brought together students from UD, Penn State and area high schools.
The First State AI Institute at UD hosted the event in partnership with the state of Delaware and the Delaware Department of Technology and Information. Student teams worked on case studies submitted by 10 state agencies covering areas such as records management, customer service, transportation and infrastructure planning, workforce and benefits administration and internal reporting.
Participating agencies included the Department of Technology and Information, Department of Finance, State Auditor's Office, Department of Education, Delaware Courts, DNREC, Division of Child Support Services, Department of Transportation, Department of State Division of the Arts and Department of Labor.
Employees worked with teams of four to five students throughout the three-day event, providing context about the problems and practical limitations of government operations.
Mentors from Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and NVIDIA also worked with the teams and provided computing platforms to help students apply AI technology to their projects.
"This hackathon shows what's possible when state government and higher education work side by side," said Bob Osmond, Delaware’s Chief Information Officer. "Our agency partners brought real problems to the table, and these students brought fresh thinking and sharp technical skills. That's how we find AI solutions that actually work for the people of Delaware."
Four teams received awards at the conclusion of the competition.
- The DNREC team of Sebastian Ortega, Varsha Danduri, Trevor Wiggins and Suma Tata received the Best Impact award.
- The Delaware Courts team of Amarnath Goud Mammidipally, Connor Vitz, Indu Reddy, Om Tilekar and Prathmesh Sudhir Karale won Best Problem Execution.
- The DelDOT team of Esther Weyer, Rahul Patel, Lakshmi Nagendra Neelakantam and Nikki Dong received the Best Technical Depth award.
- The Department of Labor team of Aidan Haack, Arron Ye, Kosiso Madu and Reshmitha Uppala won Best Creativity.
Promising concepts from the competition are expected to be evaluated for possible future development.
