The Data and Design Hackathon 2026 brought together 65 students from across disciplines to develop solutions to problems proposed by real organisations over three days, using the University’s cutting-edge computer labs.
The Data and Design Hackathon event was held in The Wave, with participation from students at all levels, from 11 Schools across three faculties. From the Faculty of Social Sciences, this included students from the School of Geography and Planning, School of Education, School of Architecture and Landscape, and School of Information, Journalism and Communication.
The event began with a ‘Design Thinking’ session on problem-based solutions, led by John McNamara, Master Inventor at IBM and Visiting Professor at the School of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield.
The 14 teams of students were then presented with real-world problems by experts from four organisations: NetworkRail, University Library, Yorkshire & Humber Office for Data Analytics, and Athletics GB.
Over three days, students used the University’s high-tech computer labs and study/collaboration spaces to develop solutions to the problems in the form of either a data science project or a design project. These included one of the data science teams looking at how to predict the swimming lap times for the next Olympic Games, whilst one of the design teams looked at redesigning housing archetypes in Sheffield.
The solutions were presented as posters and as 5-minute ‘lightning talks’, which were judged by a panel of 8 judges made up of the project owners, experts from Sheffield Digital and Sheffield Technology Parks, and Dr Sophie Rutter, Senior Lecturer in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication. The winning teams received cash prizes totalling over £1,000, and Sheffield Technology Parks also offered the opportunity for any of the teams to take forward their work to explore opportunities for creating startups.
Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar, co-organiser and Senior Lecturer in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication said: “Hackathons are typically tech events that aim at developing technical solutions to problems proposed by the industry. However, the Data and Design Hackathon goes beyond traditional hackathons and instead, looks at truly interdisciplinary solutions to real-world problems, where students from technical and non-technical specialisms can equally contribute meaningfully and learn new skills to help them develop into rounded professionals.
“This is an event that is truly one of a kind and the strong support and interest received demonstrate how much events like these are needed.”
The event was co-organised by a team of seven students from across the University - Adriel Pizarra (MSc Public Health), Benjamin Leivers (MEng Computer Systems Engineering), Britiparni Biswas (BA Architecture), Emmanuel Ita (MEng Computer Science), Hania Batool (MSc GIS), Nayantara Njondimackal (BEng Biomedical Engineering), Tamanna Mishra (BSc Computer Science and AI) - as well as several academics from the School of Information, Journalism and Communication.
It was funded by the Centre for Machine Intelligence, through the EPSRC Talent and Skills Award.
Find out more about the event, including a list of winners, here.
