Posted on October 12, 2026 by Anastasia Cisneros-Lunsford
Nearly 400 students gathered for RowdyHacks XII, showcasing their creativity, technical skills and teamwork while tackling real-world challenges.
Inspired by a casino heist, nearly 400 students spent the weekend armed with laptops instead of lockpicks to pull off a technology "heist" at RowdyHacks XII, developing innovative projects in just 24 hours to compete for top prizes at UT San Antonio’s annual hackathon.
Students from universities across Texas collaborated on software, hardware, cybersecurity and finance-focused projects, turning ideas into working solutions before presenting them to industry judges.
Organized by the Association for Computing Machinery at UT San Antonio, RowdyHacks XII brought together students from a variety of academic backgrounds to collaborate, explore new technologies and gain hands-on experience solving real-world problems. To broaden participation beyond traditional programming projects, this year's event expanded into San Pedro II, offering additional workshops, a cybersecurity capture-the-flag competition and a new finance track.
The competition concluded with teams earning recognition across several categories:
Overall Track
- First place: Fire Sight — Matthew Beck and Matthew Martinez, UT San Antonio and UT Austin
- Second place: Ground Truth — Chelsy Tinacba, Noah Christopher, Oli Olivar, Johan Caceres, St. Mary's University
- Third place: HackStash — Dhivyesh Prithiviraj, Jagadeep Kalluri, Ishita Saran, Veer Shah, UT Dallas
Beginner Track
- First place: assemblr — Alex Chapa Jr, Brayden Kim, Kishal Mumadi Jegadeeshkumar, Ali Sefraoui, UT San Antonio
- Second place: NearKey — Henry Harrison, Jacob Talamantez, Reed Shook, Samuel Russo, UT Dallas and UT San Antonio
- Third place: Eklendi — Mehmet Berke Dur, Claire King, Zachary Weiss, Shaan Desai, Trinity University
Special Categories
- Hardware Track: The Appraisal Job — Vladislav Kondratyev, Arnav Kumar, Tanish Murali, David Cazares, UT Dallas
- Best Design: Hamster Heist — Marcopolo Agostadero, Alice Rodriguez, Delaney Moore, Kristo Cisneros, UT San Antonio
- Best Theme: EmotiLock — Polar Reyna, Syan Shirazi, Koyana Kayal, UT San Antonio
Judges representing technology companies, including Amazon, Google and Meta, evaluated projects based on innovation, technical execution and overall impact. Event sponsors included: Swivel®, the UT San Antonio College of AI, Cyber and Computing, SerpAPI, Yahoo!, USAA, H-E-B, ISACA, Webhead Technologies, the UT San Antonio Investment Society and CyberJedis.
The event expanded into the larger San Pedro II facility, providing additional space for participants and activities. Organizers used the additional space to introduce new activities, including a rewards marketplace where participants could earn points to exchange for merchandise and prizes throughout the weekend.
Workshops also encouraged students to connect with peers and form teams, helping participants build relationships while developing their projects.
“We had a team-building workshop dedicated to people who show up to the event by themselves and think, 'Okay, I'm going to do this by myself,’” said Alekzander Brysch, co-director of RowdyHacks XII. “But RowdyHacks is structured around working as teams. You don't have to, but we encourage it. This workshop gave participants the chance to find people who want to develop something similar to what they want to develop and meet new people."
Cayden Hutcheson, co-director of RowdyHacks, said new competition tracks were designed to showcase how computing skills are being used beyond traditional software development. This encouraged students to apply technical skills in fields such as cybersecurity to help protect digital systems, and finance to support data analysis and decision-making.
"We brought in new companies and new people to represent San Antonio's tech community,” Hutcheson said. “Track-wise, we decided to partner with the Investment Society, which is a major finance and business organization on campus. We're partnering with them to integrate finance and the computing sector because, as AI grows, there's an increasing need for at least some technical expertise in that field. We're trying to integrate all fields."
For Cayden, the opportunity to learn new skills and connect with other students was a highlight of the competition.
"Just learning something new and meeting new people," he said. "When you spend 24 hours on a specific problem, it's pretty crazy how much you can learn."
— Anastasia Cisneros-Lunsford
