Catapult 2026

Overview

Catapult 2026 is a 36-hour hackathon combining AI, Machine Learning, and Entrepreneurship, hosted by ML@Purdue at WALC. It's a chance to build innovative solutions and think about their potential business impact.

Requirements

This hackathon is open to college students in the US who are above the legal age of majority. You'll need to submit a video demonstration of your project, ideally 3-5 minutes long, showcasing its impact, technologies used, and final results. The top 12 teams will advance to a second round where they'll give a 5-minute Shark Tank-style pitch to judges, potentially with a slideshow or demo. Judges will evaluate projects based on innovation, technical prowess, impact, creativity, fit to a track, and overall judge's pick, with each section graded out of 5 points.

Prizes

There are 6 non-cash prizes available. The overall winner receives a MacBook Neo for each team member. Other prizes include RCAC GPU-Hours for the Best ML Project, Bose SoundLink Micro Speakers for the Most Promising Startup, Sony XM5 Headphones for Best Automation, Raspberry Pi 5 kits for Best Use of Hardware, and Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 smart glasses for the Best Proof-of-Human Application.