SparkHacks continues to grow
Almost 400 students showed off their creativity and hacking skills at the annual event
SparkHacks continues to grow Heading link
The computer science department held its third university-wide collegiate hackathon, SparkHacks 2025 on Feb. 7-8 at the Academic and Residential Complex (ARC).
Close to 400 participants competed in different areas, including sustainable innovation, improving an existing app, solutions for small businesses, and a design track that required no coding.
SparkHacks continues to grow; in the event’s third year 81 projects were submitted, more than three times as many as at the first SparkHacks in 2023. This year, ten teams were named winners.
The winner in the John Deere Sustainability Innovation/ Environment category was the WingGuards team. Their app uses a trained predictive model to anticipate the likelihood that a flock of chickens may contract Avian Flu, based on the reported health of other birds in the area. The team included Ammar Bahrainwala, Angelo Guerrero, Deepikka Natarajan, and Eric Varghese. Team AgriMitra placed second.
In the Fulcrum GT Make it Make Sense track, Le’ Go took home the first prize. Team members Nour Alsramah, Zaina Khalil, Atulya Prasad, and Aye Kyawt Zin sought to improve UIC’s dining hall app by providing the location of working water bottle refill stations across East and West campuses. In this track, BouncE took second place, and Class Flow placed third.
In the Small Biz, Big Impact tract PopUp Connect bested the competition. Their app is designed to connect shop owners and artists or vendors to sell their wares at upcoming popup markets. Customers can scroll through the app to find events and check when their favorite vendors will be nearby. The team included Eman Arsham, Rasleen Dhaliwal, Kyla Gonzalez, Kristine Ma, and Rajvi Shah. Team FeedRescue placed second and team byteswipes placed third in this category.
In the no-code Seas the Design track The SeaSavers took the top prize. They used Figma to create an app that allows volunteers to track how much garbage they clean from the ocean and allow organizations to track cumulative waste collected. The app seeks to motivate volunteers through leadership boards and fun activities. This team included Jose Gonzalez, Justin Leon, Fernando Ramirez, and Priyanjali Rudra.
The SparkHacks Favorite team was Outing Otters, who created a CampusGroups app for anti-social people. The app allows students to create a profile, then add events listing the cost of the activity, and the number of people required to make the event take place. The team included self-described introverts Alexandra Duarte, Alliyah Manuel, Dylan Nguyen, Jeet Patel, and Sarim Siddiqui.
SparkHacks 2025 was sponsored by UIC’s computer science department along with several companies, including John Deere, Fulcrum GT, Grainger, and CME Group. The Hackathon included representatives from over two dozen companies, 32 mentors, and 16 judges. The hackathon was run by a group of about two dozen students, who were led by student directors Jelena Gvero and Yamaan Nandolia.
Prizes valued at over $6,000 were distributed to winning teams and included items such as noise cancelling headphones, an ergonomic office chair, LEGO sets, a television, and a gaming keyboard.
Details of each project are available on the SparkHacks 2025 website. You can follow SparkHacks on Instagram at @sparkhacksuic.