About the Challenge

The Health in Climate Hackathon 2025 is an in-person hackathon during New York Climate Week, bringing clinicians, AI engineers, climate scientists, policymakers, and operators together to ship practical, measurable solutions for: Extreme Heat, Severe Weather, Air Quality, and Sustainable Operations. Sat (9/20) 8:00–18:00 & Sun (9/21) 8:00–14:00 at Cornell Tech (Roosevelt Island).
Winners-only showcase: Wed (9/24) at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Get started

REGISTRATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.

To become a participant, please complete this google form by 7 Sept, 2025, 11:59PM ET. 
Once you submit, we shall reach out to you in the first week of September to add you to the Slack and Devpost workspaces.

If you would like to sponsor, mentor, volunteer or contribute data for the hackathon, please fill this form by 7 Sept, 2025, 11:59PM ET. 

Forming Teams

If you already have teammates, that's great. If you don't, that's completely fine. We will help you find teammates through a slack channel having all participants with different backgrounds. 

Ideal Team Composition

An ideal team would be 5-6 individuals with one or more of the following backgrounds.

  • Clinical / Healthcare
  • Data Scientist / AI Engineer
  • Climate and Environmental Science
  • Policy, Regulatory, Legal

Requirements

What to Build 

Your solution should be concrete and usable, even if it’s early-stage. It can be an app, dashboard, predictive model, decision support tool, policy playbook or anything creative.
The goal is to demonstrate that your idea could work in the hands of clinicians, patients, operators, or policymakers if developed further. At minimum, your build should have two or more of the following:

  • User-facing component — a dashboard, app, or interface that makes insights actionable.

  • Data integration layer — one or more real-world datasets (climate, health, operations, etc.) clearly connected to the problem you’re solving.

  • Analytics or intelligence — rules, models, or algorithms that transform raw data into useful signals.

  • Impact framing — a way to show who benefits (patients, providers, facilities, communities) and how you’ll measure success (fewer ER visits, lower downtime, $/ton CO₂ saved, etc.).

  • Scalability & governance plan — how it could plug into workflows while respecting privacy, compliance, and equity.

👉 Example (for illustration only):
A team building for Extreme Heat might submit a simple surge forecasting dashboard. It could pull weather + de-identified ER admissions, predict likely increases in heat-related cases, and recommend actions (e.g., staff shift alerts, open cooling centers). The interface might be a web app with an interactive chart and SMS alerts.

What to Submit

One submission per team.

  • Repo link to include install/run steps.

  • Solution demo video (≤3 min) to explain how your solution solves a problem.

  • OPTIONAL - One-pager

    • Problem & users, data sources used, model/approach, and deployment plan.

    • Impact metrics (e.g., predicted ED visits avoided, downtime hours saved, $/ton CO₂e reduced).

    • Data governance (de-identification, PHI handling, licenses/ToS, model card, fairness checks).

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$5,000+ in prizes
+ other prizes
First Place
$2,500 in cash
1 winner

Second Place
$1,500 in cash
1 winner

Third Place
$1,000 in cash
1 winner

Terra.do Scholarship
2 winners

Most Innovative Social Media

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Ann Kurth

Ann Kurth
President, New York Academy of Medicine

Sally Uren

Sally Uren
Executive Director, Forum for the Future

Lauren Risenhoover

Lauren Risenhoover
Investor, 7wire Ventures

Marilisa Rice

Marilisa Rice
Environmental Sustainability, McKesson

Judging Criteria

  • Judging Rubric
    Innovation (3 points) Use of AI, Data and Digital Tech (4 points) Feasibility (3 points) Impact (5 points) Team Composition (4 points) Scalability Potential (3 points)

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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