The Ending Pandemics Academy sponsors "Spot the Spark” challenge at UA student hackathon

The Ending Pandemics Academy sponsored the “Spot the Spark” challenge at this year’s Hack Arizona event, an annual student-run 24-hour hackathon at the University of Arizona, and the results were a big success!

The Ending Pandemics Academy (Academy) sponsored the Spot the Spark challenge, one of three featured challenges at this year’s Hack Arizona, an annual student-run 24-hour hackathon at the University of Arizona, and the response was outstanding! The Academy is part of the Global Health Institute at the UA Zuckerman College of Public Health.

Spot the Spark challenged participants to prototype a digital tool that could improve usability and engagement for a community-based disease outbreak detection platform. Ending Pandemics Academy presented the Hack Arizona student teams with this open-ended public health challenge, and the teams had to design and build solutions in 24-hours!

The results were impressive. Teams explored innovative ways to combine self-reported health data, community signals, and public health workflows into tools that were practical, safe, and explainable. Some teams even developed voice-enabled health interactions using Amazon Alexa technology!

The Hack Arizona event started the momentum, and the fun is not over! The winning team from the Spot the Spark challenge will join the Ending Pandemics Academy as 2026 summer interns (paid internships!) and also participate in our EpiHack Arizona project from May 18-22. 

EpiHack Arizona is a five-day innovation sprint that brings health experts together with technology developers to improve early disease outbreak detection across Arizona. The student prototypes produced for Spot the Spark at Hack Arizona align directly with the challenges that the EpiHack participants will work to address, providing immediate value to the event.

The Ending Pandemics Academy’s participation in Hack Arizona was a clear success: strong innovation, focused student engagement, high-performing teams, and a direct pipeline into summer internships.

Thanks to all the students for organizing and participating in Hack Arizona, and the Academy was proud to be a part of it!

Hack Arizona HackDay recap and photos    Hack AZ Winning Team Solution    EpiHack Arizona

Join us for the EpiHack Arizona Demo-Day where we reveal the digital tool that the EpiHack team created in one week to stop the spread of disease in Arizona! We hope to see you there on Friday, May 22, 3-5pm, for the big reveal at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. Please RSVP to Nomita Divi, nomita@arizona.edu. Light refreshments will be served.