What the

Together with six members of the Research Campus, student teams developed and implemented innovative solutions to exciting challenges from July 6 to 8, 2022. ARENA2036 invited students from universities in the Stuttgart area to participate. Following the kick-off on Wednesday afternoon, the teams had a total of 48 hours to solve the challenges posed by the participating members. These ranged from blockchain-based production software to the control systems for camper vans. The diversity of the challenge sponsors naturally influenced the tasks at hand: BALLUF, Mercedes-Benz, NAiSE, SIEMENS, SPIE, and ThingOS not only brought extensive resources and a wealth of expertise to the event but also had plenty of attractive prizes in store. These were distributed after the event concluded to the tired but very proud students, who, for their part, were able to take home valuable lessons and contacts. “Close contact with students is enormously important to us at ARENA2036, because they are the future—especially for us and our partners. The sooner we can establish close ties here, the greater the chance of recruiting them for our own companies later on.” says Niklas Kiefl, the event’s organizer, with great satisfaction. He and his team had ensured in advance that guests would have round-the-clock access to the research campus during the event and would be well taken care of. In addition to the prizes from the challenge sponsors, ARENA2036 provided a care package, as well as certificates of participation and goodies for all hackathon participants.

We would like to thank all students, challengers and colleagues for the great, intensive collaboration and are already looking forward to the next time when it's "What the Häck?"!