Students from New York University Abu Dhabi and 42 Abu Dhabi tested their programming, artificial intelligence and problem-solving skills during two hackathons held in Abu Dhabi with support from JetBrains. Teams were asked to move from identifying a problem to building a functional prototype within a short period, then present their solutions and explain their technical decisions and how they tested the products.
The New York University Abu Dhabi hackathon was held on September 20, while 42 Abu Dhabi hosted the second event on September 22 and 23. The university challenge focused on developing an application that runs on at least two platforms using Kotlin Multiplatform, with 35% of the evaluation allocated to product functionality and performance, alongside the strength of the problem, technical execution and clarity of the presentation.
Winning projects
Team $ocial won first place at the New York University Abu Dhabi event for an application that suggests activities matching the user’s schedule and monthly budget. The Wast Trac waste-monitoring project took second place, while the senior citizens’ assistant project came third.
JetBrains also awarded the Best Use of AI prize to a tool that helps companies understand considerations and requirements related to expanding into Middle Eastern and North African markets. Two teams shared the judges’ prize for two platforms focused on disaster management in Nepal.
At 42 Abu Dhabi, Team Kartoshka won the Build What Developers Need challenge for Lattice, an artificial intelligence agent embedded in the software development environment that coordinates and monitors other coding agents and shows developers their activities and potential conflicts in shared projects. Team Placebo came second with an assistant for developing healthcare solutions and handling legacy code, while Team Hybrid Falcons took third place for an add-on that enforces regular break periods for developers.
What does this model test?
The value of a hackathon is not limited to the speed of producing code; it also extends to testing teams’ ability to build a product that actually works and make decisions under time pressure. This priority aligns with the shift in development tools: JetBrains’ 2026 State of Developer Ecosystem survey showed that 90% of professional developers used AI coding agents at least once a week between May and July 2026, while 68% used them daily.
However, the source explains that code generation does not determine software quality or reliability. Developers are still required to understand the outputs, test them, address their defects and take responsibility for the results. This was reflected in the competition criteria, which did not settle for presenting an idea or producing code, but required participants to prove that their solutions worked and explain their limitations.
Local context
The events took place in the context of the Abu Dhabi Digital Government Strategy 2025–2027, which allocated AED 13 billion to digital transformation and the adoption of modern technologies, with these efforts expected to contribute more than AED 24 billion to the emirate’s gross domestic product and create more than 5,000 jobs by 2027. The winners of the university challenge received total prizes worth AED 10,000 in the form of Amazon gift cards, in addition to the JetBrains professional product suite.