Awards and hackathons

The biggest wins

Win Oct 2026 · Pennsylvania, USA

Launchpad by Stan

Winner on Demo Day. Won with Kobe AI as Founding Engineer: 30 teams, selected from about 700 applications.

USD 100,000

As announced to the teams; written confirmation pending.

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Two-week startup competition. With Kobe AI as Founding Engineer I kept shipping the product throughout (about 470 commits) and built the investor pitch deck. The team won after the final investor pitch on Demo Day, among about 30 international startups. USD 100,000 prize, no equity.

When

4–19 October 2026, Demo Day on 18 October

Where

Private camp in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania, USA

Field

30 teams, selected from about 700 applications

Hosts

Stan co-founders John Hu and Vitalii Dodonov

Prize

USD 100,000 in cash, no equity

My role

Founding Engineer in the Kobe AI team of three

How the programme ran

• Every morning a 9 a.m. session with the two hosts, then building in a shared hall with fibre internet and no mobile signal.
• Challenges with a live leaderboard: content and building in public, user interviews, revenue, a launch video and a pitch.
• Office hours with designers, content coaches and a video team; mentors and speakers included Gary Vaynerchuk, Daymond John and Sophia Amoruso.
• Two eliminations at the campfire: on 10 October half the teams went home, on 14 October ten teams were left.

What I did

• René brought me into the team at short notice. I cancelled a week away with friends and two university courses to go.
• Kept shipping the product during the two weeks: Kobe V3 and the desktop app, about 470 commits in October.
• Built the pitch deck for Demo Day, two days before the final pitch.
• Worked through the revenue, content and user-interview challenges with the team.

Result

• Through both eliminations to Demo Day, then the final pitch to investors.
• The team won the USD 100,000 prize.

What I took away

• Building from zero to one in days instead of weeks, and cutting scope to what matters on the day.
• Selling and talking to users, not only coding.
• Pitching to investors, with cameras running and the next elimination ahead.

launchpad.stan.com ↗

Win Feb – Jun 2024 · Weimar · Jena · Heilbronn

Jugend forscht 2024

Thuringia, plus the DGUV special prize at the 59th national final. A CNN system that detects pneumonia on chest X-rays; team of three.

State winner

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Regional winner in Weimar, first prize at the Thuringian state round in Jena plus two special awards, and the special prize of the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV) at the 59th national final in Heilbronn, for a CNN system that detects pneumonia on chest X-rays. Team of three.

Category

Working World (Arbeitswelt)

Team

Three students from a specialized STEM school in Erfurt

Origin

Grew out of my Abitur research project

Rounds

Weimar (Feb), Jena (9 Apr), Heilbronn (30 May – 2 Jun 2024)

Three rounds

• Regional round in Weimar: regional win for the best interdisciplinary project, plus a place at the JugendUnternimmt summer school.
• State round in Jena, 80 young researchers and 39 projects: state winner in Working World (first prize) and two special prizes.
• 59th national final in Heilbronn, 175 participants and 107 projects: special prize of the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV) for work on prevention and rehabilitation, EUR 1,000.

What we built

• A convolutional neural network written from scratch in NumPy, to understand every layer.
• Then a comparison of established architectures in PyTorch, among them ResNet, DenseNet, EfficientNet, ConvNeXt and VGG19.
• Lung segmentation and class activation maps that show where the network looks, inside a DICOM viewer.
• All commits in the two public repositories are mine.

What I took away

• Defending a research project in front of expert juries, three times.
• Carrying one project for about a year and a half, from school research paper to national final.

The project ↗

1. Sep 2026
   OpenAI Hackathon at IdeaLab! 2026 Participant Built “Voya” in 48 hours as technical lead.
   Took part
2. Jun 2026
   AWS World Sports Innovation Cup 2026 Winning team “Connected Arena”, a fan engagement concept and prototype; pitched in the final. As announced to the teams; written confirmation pending.
   Win
3. Mar 2026
   START Hack 2026 Participant 600+ hackers, 36 hours: built “Thesinator” for the Studyond challenge.
   Took part
4. May 2025
   Siemens × AWS Hackathon “ReThink Recycling” Winning team Real-time trash detection on a live camera feed, with YOLOv8. As announced to the teams; written confirmation pending.
   Win
5. Apr 2025
   Bundesliga Hackathon 2025 Winning team One of six winning teams among 42, with a cross-platform fan app and AI chat.
   Win
6. Dec 2024
   E-Challenge, HPI Engine Best Pitch 2024 One-minute pitch among about 15 teams: “Ratard”, an extension against fake news.
   Prize
7. Jul 2024
   JugendUnternimmt Summer School First place, pitch competition Built a business model in one workshop week and pitched it to a jury of founders.
   Win
8. until 2024
   German Karate Championships (DKV) U14 vice-champion and U21 team bronze German U14 vice-champion in kumite; bronze in the U21 team kumite (2023); 1st Dan.
   Prize
9. Jun 2024
   MINT-EC certificate With distinction Top level in all three categories.
   Prize
10. 2022/23 and 2023/24
    Bundeswettbewerb Informatik First prize in round 1, twice First prize in round 1 in both years, qualifying for round 2 each time.
    Prize
11. Nov 2023
    Computer Science Team Competition of Thuringia's STEM schools First place Team of three from the Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium Erfurt.
    Win