Competition
Plus thousands in track prizes and project awards
From project challenges to track competitions, multiple ways to win big at HackKentucky
Competition Format
Register, Select Project, and Judging
Register
- •Register for the event here
- •Join our Slack workspace
- •Form your team
- •(Optional) Submit your resume for employer consideration
Choose Your Project
Bring your own idea or select from our sponsored projects below. Sponsored projects offer additional bounty rewards while still being eligible for the grand prize!
Judging Process
Projects can compete in up to 2 tracks. Track winners automatically advance to the finals, with additional wildcard spots available for outstanding projects in competitive tracks. View full judging criteria.
Competition Tracks
Louisville Track
Solutions focused on improving Louisville's community and infrastructure
Startup Track
Innovative solutions with commercial potential
Environmental Track
Projects addressing environmental challenges and sustainability
Health Track
Solutions for healthcare and wellness challenges
High School Track
Dedicated track for high school innovators
AI Track
Solutions focused on AI and machine learning
Open Track
Tackle any problems you want
Presentation Requirements
Live Demo (Preferred)
Show your product in action with a live demonstration of key features.
Slide Deck
Present a comprehensive overview including:
- Problem - What issue are you solving?
- Solution - How does your project address it?
- Outcome - What are the results and benefits?
- How it works - Technical implementation
- Team - Who contributed what?
Sponsored Projects
Companies are offering dedicated prizes for solutions to their Projects
Swell Health
Prize Package:
- •$250 cash bounty (split if winner is a team)
- •LinkedIn recommendation based on hackathon performance
- •Swell merch (t-shirts & stickers)
- •Guaranteed full round interview (screening skip) for next engineering opening
Problem Statement:
We partner with advocates, influencers & nonprofits to promote Swell. We need a central hub where we can track and share performance metrics, attribution, and scheduled payouts with partners. This is in essence an affiliate tracking app.
Requirements:
- •Solution must be built in Google Apps Script using Google sheets as its database
- •AI is allowed and encouraged, just be prepared to explain your code
- •Teams keep their code for portfolios, Swell gets a copy of winning code
- •Admin dashboard for partner management, promo code generation, and stats tracking
- •Partner dashboard with login, promo code viewing, and redemption tracking
- •Leaderboard functionality in both admin and partner dashboards
- •Redemptions sheet for manual promo code entry
- •API for dynamic redemption data fetching
- •Bonus: Partnership types (advocate, influencer, driver) with type-specific leaderboards
- •Bonus: UI consistent with Swell's brand
- •Bonus: Future development roadmap
Sedrino Labs
Prize Package:
- •Prize amount $500 cash
- •Recognition on hackathon website and social channels
- •Potential collaboration or funding opportunities
Problem Statement:
We want to see you push the boundaries of multimodal AI by creatively fusing images with Large Language Models (LLMs)—with a special focus on generating high-value tokens. High-value tokens are those crucial pieces of text that deliver meaningful impact—such as life-saving medical information, breakthroughs in technical research, or transformative insights.
Requirements:
- •Use existing models like Google Gemini, OpenAI, or Anthropic (no building LLMs from scratch)
- •Demonstrate high-value token generation through image-LLM integration
- •Show innovation in model usage (e.g., bounding boxes, advanced APIs)
- •Solve real-world, high-stakes problems with practical applications
- •Implement robust technical methods (fine-tuning, embeddings, multimodal processing)
- •Create user-friendly interface with clear documentation
- •Submit demo video showing image-LLM integration
- •Provide GitHub repository with setup instructions
- •Include project write-up explaining technical implementation
- •Bonus: Medical/Scientific image analysis implementation
- •Bonus: Complex diagram/blueprint interpretation
- •Bonus: Interactive educational/training tools
- •Bonus: Advanced Visual Question-Answering (VQA)
Want to Submit a Project?
Join other innovative companies in challenging our hackers with your problem.
Submit Your Project