Varsity Hackathon 2025

Student Highlights: Varsity Hackathon 2025

This year’s Varsity Hackathon (V HACK) 2025 brought together some of Malaysia’s brightest student innovators, all eager to transform big ideas into working prototypes tackling real-world challenges. Organized by the Computer Science Society at Universiti Sains Malaysia, the nationwide competition spanned several weeks filled with mentorship sessions, brainstorming marathons, coding, and final pitches designed to align with current industry trends. Among them, two teams from Monash University Malaysia rose to the challenge and both proudly brought home Consolation Prizes, demonstrating creativity, teamwork, and determination.

Team Abracadabra with Goh Jia Xuan, Ooi Pei Shuen and other university students

Team Hokkien Mee Is Red with Hew Jin Hong and other university students

The journey began when two Monash teams discovered a problem within the hackathon’s theme and felt inspired to solve it. Motivated by curiosity and guided by their mentor, Dr. Liew, they jumped in and started exploring digital healthcare ideas, voice recognition AI, and APIs to build something real. Balancing classes with late-night coding sessions wasn’t easy, but teamwork and shared determination kept them going. Along the way, they tackled challenges like deciding which features truly mattered and figuring out technical hurdles, such as mirroring a phone screen during their demo.

When pitch day finally came, excitement and nerves filled the air. Presenting to the judges was the result of weeks of effort and collaboration. Winning Consolation Prizes felt rewarding, but what meant most were the lessons learned, friendships formed, and the thrill of pushing beyond classroom boundaries. “We are grateful that our hard work has brought us success, but we definitely valued the experience, teamwork, countless brainstorming and debugging sessions,” the teams shared.

In the end, Varsity Hackathon 2025 proved to be much more than a competition. It became a journey of growth, friendship, and hands-on problem-solving, where students discovered the power of working together to turn ideas into impact. Congratulations once again to our Monash teams for making us proud and showing that with creativity and teamwork, even the most ambitious projects can become reality.