Knox Computer & Data Science Students Shine in Hacking, Coding, and Data Competitions

The quality of Knox College students is evident in the classroom, but this year their achievements outside of academics drew attention to the broader value of a Knox education. Knox computer and data science students put their academic skills to the test multiple times this year, immersing themselves in various challenges by taking on some of the country’s brightest minds. Knox students excelled in several competitions, earning awards and recognition for their efforts at events like HackFest Illinois at the University of Illinois, Hack Augie at Augustana College, Hackathon at the University of Michigan, and the ASA DataFest, proving their competitive edge.

“I began participating in Hackathons toward the end of the winter term. My first experience was intimidating,” said computer science major Galgallo Waqo ’27. “I hadn’t faced such a competitive environment since national exams at the end of high school. I wanted to assess my progress at the end of junior year and measure myself against other students in a competitive setting.”

Teaming with computer science and data science double major Santosh Pant ’27, the duo won HackIllinois 2026 at the University of Illinois for Best Use of Actian VectorAI DB. The event was tiring, as the pair worked all day and night on their problem and presentation. They even had a harder time as the lone two-person group, going against teams with as many as four people. 

“I was sitting around with my friends, and we found a link to sign up, and two of us signed up on the spot,” Waqo said. “The deadline passed, and we only had two when there were supposed to be four. We were going up against thousands of people on four-person teams, and there were two of us, so I thought we were cooked. There were people from MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, big universities.”

But the project, which consisted of building an AI interface to report any irregularities with CCTV, was a hit with judges, who awarded the pair first place.

“To be honest, I never expected to win. We talked with most people who were throwing around all the right buzzwords; we knew it was a word competition as well, and they all sounded so super-sophisticated. We kind of had imposter syndrome,” Waqo said. “The night before we were supposed to submit, we hit a major problem, and I was close to giving up, but we broke it down, and three hours before we were supposed to be done, it was like a lightbulb went off, and we found a workaround. We presented the product to the seven judges we demoed it for, and they loved it.”

Having success at Michigan

HackIllinois would not be the last time Waqo and Pant had worked together successfully.

Pant and Waqo teamed up with mathematics and computer science double major Nema Sherpa ’27 and data science and economics double major Adithya Asokan ’26 for a University of Michigan Hackathon.

The group’s project, AI for Heat Resilience, was successful, finishing second and taking home a $2,000 prize. Making the award even sweeter was the fact that the group was the only one composed completely of undergraduate students.

“We were given a model, we had to use that model and use our dataset so that we can fine-tune the model so it works for high-definition images,” Sherpa said. “It was mostly Michigan students there, and most were doing their master’s work on AI and data science. We were surprised. Our model had the second-best metrics, and they gave the prize to the model that performed best. We were surprised to outperform some of the grad students there while we were still studying this stuff. We just had a course on this, and they had taken machine learning for four years.”

Multiple Knox Teams Succeed at Augie

The group then stayed local, competing at HackAugie on the campus of Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.

Waqo teamed with computer science and psychology double major Piero Postigo ’27, computer science and data science double major Shuja Waraich ’27, and computer science and data science double major Chau (Kacy) Tran ’27 to win Best Data Insight at HackAugie 2026.

“Before coming to Knox, I attended a few Hackathons in Ecuador, so I had some experience in competitive coding,” Postigo said. “Gallo started doing Hackathons around here, he was winning, and he reached out to me, we’re close friends, and said we should form a team to tackle more Hackathons.”

The group’s project used a live camera stream and a custom-trained YOLO model to detect waste objects in real time, enriching detections with environmental signals and actionable guidance.

“At first we struggled with the initial idea, because we had a lot of ideas, but we had to identify if the project was feasible for 24 hours or not,” Tran said. “After a workshop, we sat down and started doing the project overnight from 4:30 p.m. to 10:30 a.m. the next day. We ended up doing a good job in data insight, using the insights they gave us. We spent time together tackling the problem; seeing others do it made us realize he had to put more effort into solving the problem. I was super happy when I heard our team’s name at the end.”

In the same competition, Pant and Asokan partnered with computer science and economics double major Dipsha Budhathoki '28 and computer and information and data science double major Ronak Jha '27 at Augustana College. This team won Best Gaming Hack.

The group built PokéCourt, an interactive courtroom mystery game powered by real data. You play as a defense attorney fighting for your Pokémon client, and three witnesses take the stand against them. The catch is that each witness is lying, and every lie ties directly to their actual stats from the Kaggle Pokemon dataset. Players have to cross‑examine, press for details, ask free‑form questions with Gemini, and catch contradictions using real numbers.

Knox Teams Crowned at DataFest Events

Hacking events were not the only place where students had success.

Asokan, Sherpa, and Pant joined data science major Vansh Chugh ’27 at the DataFest Central Illinois Chapter 2026, where they earned the Best Insights Award. They analyzed real-world healthcare data from Stormont Vail Health to identify patient journey patterns. 

Also winning at another DataFest was the team of Tran, Budhathoki, and Waraich, who just recently won Best Overall and Best Data Insight at American Statistical Association Datafest

Success at DataFest has become a tradition for Knox computer and data science students.

“I was the elder statesman and told my teammates I’d contribute less due to other commitments. We still managed a strong presentation and won Best Insight. Out of four awards, I’ve won three in three years, hoping for the fourth next year,” Chugh said.

And with all the awards and the potential for more, the group showcased that it's not the name of the school you come from, but what you learn in the classroom and the extra work you are willing to do outside of it that matters.

“I learned people from the big-name universities, they’re the same as us,” Waqo said. “The only difference is, they’ve done this multiple times. I saw an interview with President Obama, and he said people from big places are regular people when we interact. It acknowledged they’re regular people too, they’re not so far away, they’ve just done it more times. Hackathons and doing these have improved my confidence and how I see myself.”