Hosted by the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, the CMU VentureWell Virtual Energy Hackathon 2020 was an opportunity for collegiate students to tackle some of the toughest challenges facing leading energy companies and organizations. The Hackathon took place virtually on September 29-30, 2020.

Students worked in interdisciplinary teams for 24 hours to combine their energy expertise, data analytics, business intelligence, and economic reasoning to solve a specific problem presented to them. Participants had the opportunity to engage with real-world energy data, win $2,250 and network with energy experts.

2020 Hackathon Winners

Teams with the best data solutions and recommendations were awarded USD 2,250 in prizes. Students had a chance to brainstorm ideas with several student and corporate mentors and present their solutions to a panel of expert judges. 

First Place ($1000): Team 'Tartan Ignite' [Joan Nkiriki, Nyla Khan, Kyle Chrichton, and Lauren Janicke] (World Bank challenge). The team developed a Tableau dashboard to inform renewable energy investments in Uganda. The dashboard was designed to provide insights from open data hosted on various World Bank websites.

Second Place ($750): Team 'The Dundies' [Anand Mohan Yadav, Niranjana Sreejayan, Alexandra Kramer, and Siddhi Rathi] (Giant Eagle challenge). The team proposed using PV solar panels to leverage the large rooftop and parking area available in most Giant Eagle stores along with batteries to help reduce overall electricity costs.

Third Place ($500): Team 'Energy Titans' [Yash Gokhale, Soumyajit Chowdhuri, Durva Naik, and Niharika Singh] (Duquesne Light Company challenge). The team developed an automated script using Python, to predict the stability of a simulation and further optimize the result through curve fitting techniques. The script also included capabilities to generate a results report in the form of a MS Word document, for users not fluent in using the Python interface.

The virtual competition was judged by Andrew Chabot (BCI Technology Investments), Brad Morris (Giant Eagle), Elizabeth Cook (Duquesne Light Company), Hong Yang (World Bank Group), Matineh Eybpoosh (WattLearn), Sakshi Mishra (NREL) and William Sapon (Peoples Natural Gas).