HUNTSVILLE (March 3, 2025) — Nearly 50 high schoolers, college students, and professionals visited HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology on March 1, spending the day participating in the eighth HudsonAlpha Tech Challenge (HATCH). HATCH 2025 was made possible by Innovate Alabama, the presenting sponsor.
The HudsonAlpha Tech Challenge is a life sciences hackathon where participants compete to solve real-world issues faced by biotechnology researchers and innovators in genomics, genetics, and bioinformatics. Participants spent time coding throughout the day. Participants competed for the chance to win more than $5,000 in cash and prizes in two categories, High School and College/Professional.
“We are completely blown away by the level of creativity and output the fourteen participating teams were able to demonstrate at HATCH this year,” said Tyler Clark, HudsonAlpha economic development specialist and HATCH lead. “We had participants from all over Alabama, the southeast, and the country make the trip this year. It’s inspiring seeing what they were able to do with just shy of twelve hours of coding.”
HATCH 2025 saw participants from all over the country. Local Huntsville teams represented Randolph High School, the Alabama School for Cyber Technology and Engineering, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and Alabama A&M. Other teams from the region included college students from the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Georgia as well as students from Houston Academy and Dale County and Bob Jones high schools. HATCH 2025 also saw a team from California and mentors from the Boston area attend.
Agrivision, a team of four University of Alabama students, placed first in the college/professional division. Team members included Andres Alfredo Aguilar Calderon, Sonam Laba, Krishav Kasaju, and Armandeep Singh.
Maize Watch, a team of four University of Georgia graduate students studying bioinformatics placed second in the college/professional division. Their team consisted of Nathan Gravel, Parnian Rahimi, Jose Leandro Alama Ureta, and Darrian Talamantes.
Breast Cancer Detection in Microscopic Images was a team of two startup founders, Priyanka Kumari and Pandian Rajaram, who had previously relocated their business to Huntsville from San Francisco after participating in the HudsonAlpha AgTech Accelerator. They placed third in the college/professional division.
BioShield, a team of high school seniors from ASCTE placed first in the high school division. Team members included William Mitchell, Zamorah Morton, James Norris, Eugene Park, and Jacob Schumer.
DNA Sentinel, a solo team comprised of California native Jamie Thompson, placed second in the high school division.
The projects can be viewed here and the photos from the event can be viewed here.
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About HudsonAlpha: HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology is a nonprofit institute dedicated to developing and applying scientific advances to health, agriculture, learning, and commercialization. The HudsonAlpha biotechnology campus consists of 152 acres nestled within Cummings Research Park, the nation’s second-largest research park. The state-of-the-art facilities co-locate nonprofit scientific researchers with entrepreneurs and educators. HudsonAlpha is a national and international leader in genetics and genomics research and biotech education and fosters more than 50 diverse biotech companies on campus. To learn more about HudsonAlpha, visit hudsonalpha.org.
About HudsonAlpha Wiregrass: HudsonAlpha Wiregrass is a public-private collaboration between HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the City of Dothan to expand HudsonAlpha’s mission of developing and applying scientific advances to health, agriculture, learning and commercialization into the Wiregrass region.
