This year’s HackathON was held under the slogan “Fly into the future with open science and supercomputing”. More than 100 competitors in 28 teams took part in the first round, 8 teams and 32 competitors qualified for the second round.

In the final round, the best teams presented their innovative solutions to a panel of experts and an audience. The panel of experts selected the top three teams, and the audience could vote for their favourite. The event took place as part of theSlovenian Informatics Days conference, and the presentations were also streamed live on the Arnes Video portal.

The work of the panel of experts was notoriously difficult, as all the teams presented excellent projects on challenges that will be urgently needed to be addressed in the future. The winners of the Arnes HackathON 2025 were Ekipa 42, consisting of Matej Urbančič, Gašper Jalen, Barbara Knez and Miha Radež, students of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana. Their solution addressed the health and well-being challenge, proposing and testing the use of digital twins to optimise the production of biologics.

Second place went to the 5 prijateljev team: Martin Malenšek, Urša Vavpotič, Žiga Klun, Vid Gantar and Fedja Močnik, students of the Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana. They addressed the issue of limiting the spread of forest fires, which could be tamed using semantic segmentation of satellite data processed by a supercomputer.

The third place went to the DPR team, consisting of Jakob Adam Šircelj, Gašper Pistotnik and Martin Korelič. Their solution tackled the challenge of deforestation and control of areas where deforestation is a serious problem. Using satellite data and artificial intelligence, deforestation processes could be better monitored and addressed.

The audience vote was again won by the DPR team. 161 viewers from the conference audience and those who watched the presentations remotely via Arnes Video cast their vote.

During HackathON, mentors and a experts from the different fields addressed by HackathON provided expert help and support to the participants. We collaborated with Ana Slavec (UP FAMNIT and InnoRenew CoE, Slovenian Community of Open Science), Jani Pogačar from the Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto, Anton Manfreda from the School of Economics and Business at UL, Marina Rajič from the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Alenka Pšeničnik from the Ministry of Public Administration, Damjan Fujs from the Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics at UL, Jure Brence from the Jožef Stefan Institute and Bias Variance Labs, Sergeja Masten from the Slovenian Social Science Data Archives (ADP), Gašper Hrastelj from the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO, Samo Stanič from the University of Nova Gorica, coordinator of the Slovenian Supercomputing Network SLING, and Jurij Kodre, who represented the diamond sponsor Sandoz | Lek.

A particular challenge of HackathON 2025 was the Space Challenge as Slovenia became a full member of the European Space Agency (ESA) at the beginning of the year. In addition to the space challenge, contestants could also choose the Sandoz | Lek challenge, which addresses the area of health and well-being, or create their own challenge with a focus on digital doubles.

We would like to thank our sponsors for the practical prizes awarded to the winners of the audience vote and the refreshments during the competition: Radenska, Komponentko, Argeta, Isa’s Kombucha, WOOP! and Rokus Klett.

The event was held by the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia – Arnes, the Slovenian Informatics Society, the Ministry for Digital Transformation, the Ministry of Public Administration and the Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics of the University of Ljubljana in cooperation with a number of partners. Arnes Hackathon 2025 was held under the honorary patronage of the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO.