Creathon – Hackathon 2025 attracted young development talents to Ústí
On May 23–24, 2025, the Faculty of Science at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem hosted a 24-hour student hackathon called CreaThon – HACKITHON 2025. The event was organized by the Department of Data Analysis and Simulation (ODAS) at the Department of Informatics. The competition was open to secondary school students over the age of 15 and university students from all over the Czech Republic, who spent an intense marathon designing and creating practical open-source applications using open data and modern technologies.
CreaThon offered participants not only the opportunity to develop their programming skills, but also to gain experience in teamwork, presenting results, and collaborating with experts from academia and the business world. The competition was open to students over the age of 15, who worked in teams of three to five members. A total of over 70 competitors took part in the event.
This year’s edition kicked off with a series of preparatory workshops focused on working with the Pandas library, creating data dashboards, machine learning, and physiological signal analysis. The program took place in the modern classrooms of the UJEP Center for Natural Sciences and Technical Fields, where the Department of Informatics is located. The hackathon began on Friday at 12:15 p.m., continued throughout the night, and culminated on Saturday at 6:00 p.m. with the announcement of the results.
Throughout the event, participants had access to high-quality technical facilities, non-stop Wi-Fi connection, computer classrooms, expert mentoring support, refreshments, and spaces for relaxation and informal activities (chill zones, billiards). Despite the demanding pace, the atmosphere was friendly and inspiring.
The competition projects were evaluated by a panel of experts according to several criteria – practical applicability, originality, innovation, and quality of presentation. The authors of the three best team projects received prizes of CZK 20,000, CZK 10,000, and CZK 5,000. The best high school team received a special prize of CZK 3,333. All participants received diplomas and small souvenirs. In addition, the best teams were offered the opportunity to continue working with the project sponsors, who are interested in further developing and using the applications in practice.
The guarantor of the activity and head of the Department of Data Analysis and Simulation (ODAS) at the Department of Informatics, doc. Zbyšek Posel, evaluates the event with the following words: “I was pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the proposed solutions to individual topics that were created during the event and presented at the end. They contained not only technical solutions, but in some cases also visions of where the solutions could be developed in the future and what else could be added. The enthusiasm with which the representatives of the individual teams presented their visions confirmed my belief that it makes great sense to organize such events in the future and to support the younger generation in developing their creative thinking.” His words confirm the value of the entire event.
The winner of this year’s competition was the “Rychlá rota” team, composed of students from the Faculty of Science at UJEP. They focused on detecting anomalies in signals. The best of the high school teams was a group of students from the EDUCHEM Secondary School called “Error makers.” They did the best job of dynamically classifying the content of medical records (dentistry) using AI. The complete results are available here.
The event was supported by partners: Infinity Energy, s. r. o. (XDENT), Carebot s. r. o., MALFINI, a. s., from the application sphere, the Faculty of Science at UJEP, and the Data Center of the Ústí Region, p. o. (DCÚK).
“We are delighted to have been part of this year’s CreaThon – HACKITHON 2025,” says Dr. Roman Vaibar, education coordinator at DCÚK, adding: “The Data Center of the Ústí Region has been supporting this event for a long time, and we are pleased to see the level of student projects improving year after year. It’s great to see young talents developing their programming skills, learning to work in a team, and not being afraid to present their ideas.”
CreaThon – HACKITHON 2025 has once again confirmed that students are eager to create, learn, and come up with new ideas. The Department of Computer Science at the Faculty of Science, UJEP, would like to thank all participants, mentors, and partners for their cooperation and looks forward to the next edition of this successful event.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)