CU Boulder Engineering and Business Students Tackle State Energy Challenges at Annual Colorado Impact Hackathon
Engineering and business students from the University of Colorado Boulder stepped up to the whiteboard on Oct. 21, joining forces with the Colorado Energy Office and Google Boulder for the annual Colorado Impact Hackathon.
What is the Colorado Impact Hackathon?
The Colorado Impact Hackathon is a one-day, fast-paced innovation sprint where students team up with Google technical professionals to design bold solutions to Colorado’s most pressing challenges. This learning opportunity brings together interdisciplinary student teams, partnering with Googler Guides, to tackle real-world issues related to sustainability, climate and energy. Throughout the day, teams move from problem discovery to solution design, building actionable prototypes and presenting their ideas to a panel of judges. The experience blends entrepreneurship, innovation and climate action, empowering students to develop practical solutions aimed to help shape Colorado’s sustainable future.
This year’s Colorado Impact Hackathon included 70 students working with Google professionals to design tech-driven solutions to modern climate and infrastructure bottlenecks. Their projects focused on the overarching challenge: How might we innovate to create a clean, secure and resilient electric grid in Colorado?
State and institutional leaders
This year’s annual event featured multiple state and institutional leaders. Andrew Mayock, vice chancellor of sustainability at CU Boulder, and Megan Christensen of the Colorado Energy Office, kicked off the day’s program. Colorado Attorney General and Democratic Nominee for Governor Phil Weiser delivered the keynote address, emphasizing the critical importance of grid resilience. He offered a powerful message to students, encouraging them to view their future careers and life paths as entrepreneurial opportunities for experimentation and leadership.
Real-world problems, next-gen tools
Throughout the event, students tackled pressing regional obstacles outlined by state data, including multiyear clean energy project backlogs, surging electricity demand from data centers, grid cybersecurity, and severe wildfire risks that trigger emergency power shutoffs.
With guidance from Google mentors, teams used AI tools like Gemini to pressure-test their concepts, design prototypes, and refine their final pitches under a tight timeframe.
Celebrating student innovation
After a day of intense collaboration and rapid prototyping, student teams presented their final concepts to a panel of expert judges. The podium spots went to the following teams.
- First Place: SolarSnap, an intelligent vision app that helps users instantly assess solar intensity, optimize setup, and purchase a plug-in solar system tailored to their exact location
- Second Place: Grid Watch, an AI-managed network of home and community batteries that keep one’s home powered during wildfire shutoffs while lowering energy bills.
- Third Place: Grid Guard, a predictive engine combining satellite thermal tracking, terrain analysis, and utility GIS data for targeted grid hardening.
As CU Boulder continues to lead in sustainability and climate research, partnerships with industry leaders like Google and state agencies ensure that students are well-equipped to tackle the workforce challenges of tomorrow.
Event planning and steering leadership was supported by key organizers across CU Boulder and Google, including Betsy Klein and Erick Mueller of Leeds’ Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. Google participants included Brin Enterkin, Jamie Gardner, Gretchen Johnson, Christine Martinez and John Tribbia (PhDSoc’12).
CU Boulder Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock kicked off the day’s events at the 2026 Colorado Impact Hackathon.
First-place winners with Googler Sarah Bonnet.
Democratic Nominee for Governor Phil Weiser (left) with Google’s Brin Enterkin and student participants.