Date Posted: 3/10/2020

Cornell students from a range of disciplines, including computer science and engineering, gathered for this year's Cornell Initiative for Digital Agriculture (CIDA) Hackathon. In her takeaway from the event, Melanie Lefkowitz, wrote that the students appeared "to combine their disparate skills to brainstorm ways to make the world a better place." Read her full account in the Cornell Chronicle, where she notes:

This year, students from three of the world’s top agricultural universities—Wageningen University, the Netherlands; the University of Sao Paolo, Brazil; and the University of California, Davis—traveled to Cornell to participate, as did hackers from Cooper Union, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ithaca College and New York University.

Around half of Cornell’s participants were undergraduates and half were graduate students, representing nearly fifty fields of study across eleven schools. For agriculture or animal science students, the hackathon provided an opportunity to explore how digital tools of technology could aid their fields; for computer scientists and engineers, it was a chance to apply their skills to pressing, real-world problems.

The hackathon's Grand Prize went to a team comprising two Computer Science M.Eng. students: 

“Last-mile delivery of data-driven market optimization of fresh produce sales for ultra-rural farmers.” Saurabh Yadav, M.Eng. ’20, computer science; Shashank Shirke, M.Eng. ’20, engineering management; Soumya Ananthakrishnan, M.Eng. ’20, computer science; Kathryn Merckel, doctoral student, nutritional sciences.

Additional details about the CIDA Hackathon, including the event's sponsors.