1st Place Prize: Meta Quest 3s (for each team member)! + MLH Winner Pins

2nd Place Prize: Bambu Lab A1 Mini Series 3D Printer (for each team member)! + MLH Winner Pins

3rd Place Prize: InnoView 15.6 Inch Portable Monitor (for each team member)! + MLH Winner Pins

Build something physical, bonus points if it moves.

PRIZE: Hardware Box for the winning team!

Best Designed Project (UI, UX, Flow, Aesthetic). PRIZE: $120 split among the winning team.

Using Solace Agent Mesh, create an intelligent, event-driven, multi-agent AI system and use it to solve a real-world problem. Your team will design and implement an innovative application, leveraging the power of collaborative AI agents that communicate through events, demonstrating the future of scalable, distributed AI systems.

Your submission will be assessed on creativity, innovation towards solving a real-world problem, and appropriate use of Agentic AI.

PRIZES: Up to $1000 in Amazon Gift cards available!

Create a project running on the QNX real-time operating system! Use a hardware target (like Raspberry Pi) to build an embedded application running on the QNX OS.

PRIZES: $1000 in Gift Cards for the winning team. If you present a project that uses QNX, your team will receive one Raspberry Pi Kit to keep!

Implement video processing in SystemVerilog using Vivado 2025.2, work alongside Ross Video FPGA experts to create an expert hardware hack!

PRIZES:
1st Place: $200 Visa Card for each team member
2nd Place: $100 Visa Card for each team member
3rd Place: $50.00 Visa Card for each team member

SurveyMonkey is dedicated to helping organizations around the world transform feedback into growth. However, a persistent challenge remains: getting people to take a survey requires a dedicated investment of their time, often with little to no immediate incentive, creating a significant mental barrier. We challenge you to make static forms obsolete and completely reimagine how we capture user sentiment. Your mission is to build a solution where giving feedback is invisible, gamified, or instantaneous. Gathering valuable insights in a way that feels natural, seamless, and non-intrusive. Imagine a world where feedback collection is an integrated part of everyday digital interaction, not a separate task.

To truly transform this process, you are encouraged to leverage AI in your solution. Teams are encouraged to think critically about their own survey-taking experiences, identify a compelling use case, and develop a prototype that demonstrates how AI can dissolve the friction of feedback.

We will be handing out a limited number of OpenAI keys on a first come first serve basis to teams who sign up for the challenge. Please reach out to us in Discord and be sure to include the names of all of your team members.

PRIZES:

1st Place: 4x$250 Amazon Gift Cards

2nd Place: $250 Amazon Gift Card

3rd Place: $100 Amazon Gift Card

Build a project that pulls and processes web information via the Yellowcake API. Submissions will be judged based on real world impact, and effectiveness; as well as how you've leveraged the Yellowcake API within your solution.

PRIZES:

1st Place: $500 split among the team
2nd Place: $300 split among the team
3rd Place: $200 split among the team

Sentry is the all-in-one debugging platform that helps teams fix issues faster by combining connected telemetry (errors, logs, traces) with Seer as our AI debugger

Sentry already tells you something broke or when it's slow
Logs + Metrics tell you when and why
Seer, your AI Debugger, tells you what to do next

Build whatever app you want, what we'd love to see is how well you instrument it with Sentry. Here are the things we'd love for you to think about: Monitor "critical experiences" vs just observe and collect data. Head over to our docs to learn more about Logs, AI Agent Monitoring, Metrics and Tracing. https://docs.sentry.io

PRIZES:

1st Place: $1000 Visa Gift Card +$5,000 Sentry credits
2nd Place: Sentry Skateboard + $2,500 Sentry credit

Problem Statement:
Design and build a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) simulator that models trade route patrol and
natural resource protection operations in the Canadian Arctic. This should enable leadership
teams to identify the most sustainable strategies for resource utilization.

Context:
Geopolitical changes and Arctic ice melt are creating new trade routes and risks in Canada’s
north, requiring the Navy to protect maritime interests in harsh and dynamic conditions with
limited resources. The complexity of diverse roles and rapidly changing weather adds to the
operational challenges.

To meet these demands, it is envisioned that the Navy will need modern simulation and
decision-support tools for quickly testing scenarios, optimizing resource use, and improving
strategy. These tools should also engage new recruits and empower senior leadership with
data-driven insights for efficient mission planning and Arctic security.
The goal: secure Canada’s Arctic with maximized efficiency and minimal resources.

Success Criteria:
1. Operational Relevance- Captures key aspects of Arctic operations for persistent
surveillance (trade routes, resource sites, weather/ice, long distances). Includes
representative naval/joint assets (autonomous or not) with basic capability differences.

2. Resource Efficiency and Optimization- Tracks and displays key resource use (assets,
fuel/energy, time, etc.). Helps users find ways to meet objectives with fewer resources
(e.g., better patrol patterns).

3. Decision-Support for Senior Leaders- Provides clear, executive-level outputs
(dashboards, summaries, visualizations) that show risk, coverage, and trade-offs
following simulated exercise.
a. Bonus: Allows comparison of different courses of action (COAs).

4. Usability & User Experience - Simple, intuitive interface usable with minimal training.
Easy scenario setup (threat level, traffic, weather, asset availability). Clear feedback on
what is happening in the simulation.

5. Technical Quality- Runs stably and performs smoothly with a realistic number of
entities. Built in a modular way so new assets, rules, or data can be added later.

6. Insight, Innovation and Impact- Provides meaningful metrics (e.g., coverage, detection
probability, response times). Demonstrates an innovative or engaging approach (e.g.,
game-like elements, novel visualizations, AI/heuristics). Clearly explains how the
solution could support real-world Arctic planning and resource allocation.

Prizes:
-1st place: 4 x 100$ gift cards
-2nd place: 4 x 50$ gift cards
-3rd place: 4x 25$ gift cards

Create a tool for the national flight planning center that extracts insights from a list of daily planned flights and proposes solutions for conflicts and hot spots while considering cost and efficiency. The idea is that air traffic planners will use the insights from your tool to adjust the planned flight operations.

Supporting data and information can be found at the following Github repository: https://github.com/ohnoitsalex/uOttawaHack2026

Judging Criteria:

Capabilities, Features and Insights

User Experience and Operational Feasibility

Creativity

PRIZES:

1st Place: 4 x Holy Stone HS175D GPS Drone with 4K Camera and a NAV CANADA Tower Simulator Tour (Spring 2026)
2nd Place: 4 x Wireless Over-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones
3rd Place: 4 x Portable Bluetooth Speaker

Build a web app that runs the same user created task across multiple agentic AI frameworks & models, then shows side‑by‑side outputs (or plan) and meaningful metrics. Judged on the UX, creativity, and quality of the comparison.

PRIZES:5x 50$ amazon Gift Cards for the winning team

Build a Vercel Edge-powered load balancer that routes requests intelligently, detects bot traffic with AI, and provides real-time analytics via a dashboard.

Teams must create a load balancer tool that:
Routes requests to multiple backends (or logical endpoints) based on configurable policies.
Detects suspicious/bot traffic using ai or heuristics at the edge.
Blocks or reroutes bot requests automatically.
Aggregates traffic metrics and bot detection stats into a live dashboard

Prize: $50 for each participant of the winning team

Best project from a team composed for Carleton and uOttawa students.

PRIZE: 4 Pandas plushies

Prize: Google Swag Kits

It's time to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI using Google Gemini. Check out the Gemini API to build AI-powered apps that make your friends say WHOA. So, what can Gemini do for your hackathon project?

- Understand language like a human and build a chatbot that gives personalized advice

- Analyze info like a supercomputer and create an app that summarizes complex research papers

- Generate creative content like code, scripts, music, and more

Think of the possibilities… what will you build with the Google Gemini API this weekend?

Links:

- https://mlh.link/gemini-quickstart

Prize: SenseCAP Watcher & Presage Perks

Presage is pioneering the Human Sensing Layer, enabling any application to understand a person's real-time physical and emotional state. With Presage, you can leverage clinically-proven vital signs, movement, emotion, and/or focus tracking to build a project that gives the standard camera super powers.

Use any of the Presage SDKs to integrate capabilities like real-time heart rate, breathing rate, engagement levels, and facial expressions into your hack with just a few lines of code.

Imagine the possibilities!

- Immersive Gaming & Entertainment: Dynamically change game difficulty, music, or story elements based on a player's real-time excitement or focus levels.

- Contactless Wellness & Fitness: Build a non-invasive app that monitors stress, recovery, or fitness performance without requiring a specialized wearable device.

- Accessibility & Security: Utilize vital signs for advanced, effortless authentication, or to enhance accessibility for specific user groups.

- Productivity: Design a tool that tracks focus or stress in real-time, providing feedback or environmental adjustments to optimize remote work or study sessions.

Build your next hack with Presage and show us the future of human-computer interaction! Best Use of Presage winners will receive SenseCAP Watchers for each team member, along with the following perks from the Presage team:

- A Free design consultation with a Presage application deployment expert

- Free refills for Presage Development credits to accelerate you through your next three months of building

- 30% off all Presage usage charges for your first year after going live

Links:

- https://mlh.link/presage

- https://mlh.link/presage-SDK

Prize: Ledger Nano S Plus

The world of development is evolving fast and Solana is leading the charge with a network built to handle all of your infrastructure needs. Forget high fees and slow confirmations, it's time to build applications that are fast, efficient, and scalable.

Harness Solana's core advantages like blazing fast execution and near-zero transaction costs to make your hackathon ideas become real world projects. With Solana, the possibilities are endless.

- Create a game, social app, or consumer product that relies on instant, high-frequency transactions.

- Design a sophisticated trading, lending, or decentralized exchange (DEX).

- Build a prototype for supply chain, identity, or payments that can handle massive, real-world volume.

Show us how you can innovate with Solana for a chance to win some cool prizes for you and each member of your team!

Links:

- https://mlh.link/solana

Prize: Retro Wireless Mouse

DigitalOcean offers a reliable and easy-to-use cloud platform for every stage of your project. Leverage core services like Droplets, Managed Databases, and App Platform to build, deploy, and scale your application effortlessly. Building with AI? DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI enables you to build, train, and deploy machine learning models, including access to GPU infrastructure and serverless inference!

Sign up for DigitalOcean today and get $200 worth of free credits that you can use towards building your next great hack. Build with DigitalOcean's robust cloud infrastructure for a chance to win some great prizes for you and each of your teammates!

Links:

- https://mlh.link/digitalocean-signup

- http://mlh.link/digitalocean

Prize: Wireless Earbuds

Deploy natural, human-sounding audio with ElevenLabs. Create realistic, dynamic, and emotionally expressive voices for any project, from interactive AI companions to narrated stories and voice-enabled apps. ElevenLabs will empower you to build rich, immersive experiences without the need for actors or complex audio production, using simply the power of AI.

Integrate fully autonomous audio experiences into your hack with ElevenLabs and give your project a voice, along with giving your team the chance to win some wireless earbuds!

Links:

- https://mlh.link/elevenlabs

Prize: M5GO IoT Starter Kit

MongoDB Atlas takes the leading modern database and makes it accessible in the cloud! Get started with a $50 credit for students or sign up for the Atlas free forever tier (no credit card required). Along with a suite of services and functionalities, you'll have everything you need to manage all of your data, and you can get a headstart with free resources from MongoDB University!

Build a hack using MongoDB Atlas for a chance to win a M5GO IoT Starter Kit for you and each member of your team.

Links:

- https://mlh.link/mongodb

- https://mlh.link/mongodb-free

- https://mlh.link/mongodb-university

Prize: Desktop Microphone & a Free .Tech Domain Name for up to 10 years!

Make your Team's Achievements timeless: Win a .Tech Domain Name for up to 10 years to Showcase and Expand Your Project, Plus Desktop Mics for Effortless Collaboration on Zoom, empowering you to build even more cool things together!

Links:

- https://get.tech/mlh