A recurring innovation and research platform for the UMKC community
Hack-A-Roo and Research-A-Thon are complementary annual programs, run by UDICA and QSAIC, that connect student work with faculty mentorship, technical experimentation, and public impact across the School of Science and Engineering.
Two competitions, one platform
Hack-A-Roo is our annual hack-a-thon. It is an application-focused competition where student teams build working software and go head to head to see whose project is best. Research-A-Thon is that same idea turned toward research, rewarding novelty, inventiveness, and the strength of the ideas behind a project rather than just the build. We run one of each every year, Hack-A-Roo in the fall and Research-A-Thon in the spring, and together they give students a single place to take something from a rough idea all the way to a finished, presented, and judged piece of work in front of faculty, peers, and industry.
Fifteen years of momentum
The program's roots run deep. Semester-based hackathons at UMKC date back to 2010 and regularly drew more than 150 students per event alongside heavy industry participation. Its technical focus has grown right along with the field, moving from early programming and software challenges through data science and machine learning, into applied AI, large language models, and AI agents, and on to today's frontier of Quantum AI and National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) sponsored tracks. Since 2023 the spring event has taken on its own distinct research identity while the fall event continues as its applied, build-focused counterpart, and recent years have added dedicated NSF NRT research teams, an AI sponsored track, and an Engineering sponsored track that keep broadening the program from a computer-science competition into a school-wide innovation and research showcase.
More than a competition
What makes the model work is that it gives coursework, research, and student organizations a common finish line. Students produce working applications, research prototypes, posters, papers, reproducible software, and public presentations, and courses like the Data Science Capstone and Big Data / AI now use the events as formal showcase venues. External judges and speakers bring feedback, networking, and recruiting exposure that connects academic work to real professional expectations. It also stays student-led, with UDICA and QSAIC coordinating the volunteers, technical communities, sponsor relationships, and event execution that keep it running each semester. The result is a place where strong projects don't just earn a grade. They become visible artifacts that can carry on toward publications, prototypes, external competitions, and industry collaboration.
Contacts
Dr. Yugyung Lee
Professor of Computer Science, UMKC
Sunny Sood
President, UDICA (UMKC Distributed Intelligent Computing Association)
Luke Miller
President, The Quantum Society for AI & Computation (QSAIC), UMKC
Jeff Blackwood
Office of Commercialization, Technology Venture Studio, UMKC