2025 Geoscience Hackathon
Oct. 10-12, 2025
The Jackson School of Geosciences invites students to participate in the annual Geoscience Hackathon, which will take place October 10-12 at the Scholars Lab in the Perry Castañeda Library. This event is supported by the UT Open-Source Program Office (OSPO),
Hackathons help enhance software programming skills, boost creativity, promote collaboration and networking, and provide opportunities to contribute to existing open-source projects.
The theme for the 2025 hackathon is change over time. Changes in Earth’s systems happen both in real-time, such as during monitoring of geohazards, and over millions of years in geological time. Hackathon teams, guided by mentors, will develop computational models to track geochanges. A panel of judges will evaluate the projects and award prizes.
Interested students can sign up for the hackathon by completing the registration form. Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome. Some software programming experience is necessary. Due to limited space, early registration will be prioritized. The registration deadline is September 26.
Mentors:
- Yangkang Chen (Research Associate Professor, Bureau of Economic Geology)
- Xuesong Ding (Research Assistant Professor, Bureau of Economic Geology)
- Sergey Fomel (Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Bureau of Economic Geology)
- Brendon Hall (Senior Manager in AI, Deloitte)
- Richard Ketcham (Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)
- Toti Larson (Research Associate Professor, Bureau of Economic Geology)
- Ben Lasscock (Director of Digital Data Innovation, TGS)
- Nam Pham (Data Scientist, SLB)
- Altay Sansal (Lead Data Scientist, TGS)
- Naveen Sudharsan (Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)
- Zoltán Sylvester (Research Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)
Organizing Committee:
- Yangkang Chen (Research Associate Professor, Bureau of Economic Geology)
- Cameron Cummins (Computational Geoscientist, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)
- Charlie Dey (Director of Training & Professional Development at Texas Advanced Computing Center)
- Sergey Fomel (Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Bureau of Economic Geology)
- Macy Hamel (Student, Jackson School of Geosciences)
- Alex Marden (GIS and Geospatial Data Coordinator at UT Libraries)
- Angela Newell (Director of the Open Source Program Office)
- Lena Duplechin Seymour (Collaborative Support Specialist at Texas Advanced Computing Center)
- Michael Shensky (Head of Research Data Services at UT Libraries)