Food waste solution wins top prize at hackathon

A team of students with an idea using AI to help food service establishments reduce food waste won the top prize in the Food Hackathon, which took place Oct. 25-27 in Stocking Hall.

Waste Watcher AI was created by Shashank Kalyanaraman '26 (A&S), Ethan Beane '27 (CALS), Pranav Kaundinya '26 (Dyson) and Saurav Tewari '26 (A&S), all first-time attendees to a hackathon.

Their system would measure the amount of food left on a plate by using a camera installed above a plate return area. Using that data, AI would determine what type of food is left and how much, offering a detailed report to the operator, allowing them to make changes such as reducing portion sizes or rethinking certain menu offerings.

"Food waste is something we all felt pretty passionate about, so we adapted an AI idea we had for pest identification to this idea," said Kalyanaraman, a math and computer science major.

Kaundinya said their idea evolved over the weekend, as they met with some of the hackathon's 50 faculty, staff, industry partner and alumni mentors. "We tailored our idea as we learned more from the mentors and from the other teams," he said.

Beane said they initially thought restaurants would be a target market, but mentors suggested prison systems and universities, as places that would more likely invest in a system like this and where the company could make more revenue.

Kalyanaraman said his team plans to talk to businesses in the food service industry to see how they might take their idea further.

The hackathon, hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell in partnership with the Cornell Institute for Food Systems Industry Partnership Program, included more than 150 undergraduate and graduate students from almost all of Cornell's Ithaca campus schools and colleges.

Students worked on ideas related to this year's challenges - honey, dairy, fermentation, fiber and post-harvest food waste. The hackathon started on Friday night, with students working with mentors throughout the day Saturday.

"Every year the students continue to impress me with their ever-increasing creativity and skills," said Ami Stuart '10 MS '23, hackathon director and lecturer at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. "From the technology created by Waste Watchers to the flavor profiles, design, and packaging created by the teams with CPG [consumer packaged goods] products, it was an outstanding demo day on Sunday."

Margaux Mora Ph.D. '23, associate on the global applications team for Ingredion, one of the sponsors for this year's hackathon, was one of the mentors at this year's event.

"It was incredible to see the caliber of the students' work in such a short period of time," she said, adding that some hackathon workshops, including one on design thinking, were helpful for mentors, as well. "I asked the students lots of questions and gave them things to consider in terms of technical feasibility and product launch. I also answered questions they had about sourcing ingredients, how processing might change some ingredients and making sure they could technically achieve the product they were thinking of making."

On Sunday, teams showed off their ideas, winning more than $10,000 in cash and accelerator prizes.

"This year's food hackathon showcased the students' ideas for addressing the real-world problems in delivering nutritious and affordable products to consumers while reducing or mitigating food waste," said Rajni Aneja, managing director of the Cornell Institute for Food Systems Industry Partnership Program. "We are looking forward to the student teams' progressing their concepts toward prototyping via the additional accelerator prizes and other opportunities available to them in Cornell's food innovation ecosystem."

Other winning teams included:

• Most market ready: Fermentastic Four team of Allie Lin '27 (SC Johnson), Casper Liao '27 (A&S), Christina Pitacco-Rivera '27 (CALS) and Sofia O'Keefe '27 (SC Johnson)
• Most Innovative: Food Fusionaries team of April Huang Ph.D. '26 (CALS), Eugenia Avellaneda MS '25 (CALS), Maria Amalia Beary Ph.D. '25 (CALS), Sonia Su Ph.D. '26 (CALS) and Viral Shukla Ph.D. '25 (CALS)
• Most futuristic concept: The U-mamis team of Andria Cao '27 (HOTEL), Eva Ho '38 (CALS), Kaylee Yin '24 (CALS) and Yubing Yang '25 (CALS)
• Most Eco Solution: No Monkey Business team of Ben Loong '26 (HUMEC), Luke Huang '27 (A&S); Serena Tang '26 (HOTEL), Yufei Wang '26 (HOTEL)

This year's other hackathons include:

• Building Tomorrow's Workforce: Talent 2.0, Nov. 8 - 10, New York City
• AI, Jan. 17-19, 2025, New York City
• Animal Health, Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2025, Cornell
• Digital Agriculture, Feb 28 - March 2, 2025, Cornell
• Health, March 14-16, 2025, New York City

Find more information about this year's hackathons on the Entrepreneurship at Cornell website.

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