Catalysts

This hackathon offers a unique opportunity to learn from the best. Our dedicated mentors with deep industry experience are on hand to share practical insights and guide your team. When it's time to present, your work will be assessed across three award categories — one decided by community vote and two by our judging panel, which will be announced soon.

Judges

Our judging panel will be announced soon. Stay tuned for updates!

Judging procedure

Solutions will be evaluated across four key pillars. Judges will determine winners in two award categories; the third is decided by community vote.

Functionality & Execution

Functionality & Execution

  • The solution must run
  • It must perform the claimed functionality
  • Should be stable during demonstration
  • Effective handling of challenges
Technical Innovation

Technical Innovation

  • Novelty of the approach or application
  • Complexity of the AI techniques utilized
  • Handling of technical challenges
  • Technical creativity
Problem Solving & Impact

Problem Solving & Impact

  • Clarity of problem being addressed
  • Potential usefulness/impact
  • Addresses a significant need or challenge
Presentation & Communication

Presentation & Communication

  • Quality of the demo/presentation
  • Clear explanation of technical aspects
  • Ability to answer questions
  • Storytelling and conveying the value proposition

Scoring

1

Poor/Incomplete

2

Basic/Minimal

3

Good/Solid

4

Excellent

5

Outstanding/Exceptional

Final Score:

Maximum = 20 points

Minimum requirement: Solution must score at least 3 in "Functionality & Execution" to be eligible for prizes

Mentors

Antonis Peris

Antonis Peris

Associate Software Engineer

Graduate of BSc and MSc in Computer Science Department from the University of Crete, currently working as an Associate Software Engineer at Epignosis. My primary area of interest is backend software engineering, dedicated to continuous professional development.

Aggelos Bellos

Aggelos Bellos

Senior Software Engineer

I’m Aggelos Bellos, a senior software engineer on the Architecture Team at Epignosis. My day-to-day revolves around advocating for Domain-Driven Design and Test-Driven Development. When I’m not (politely) annoying people about those, I’m usually doing the same by introducing new rules to our static analysis tools and CI pipeline. Beyond the code, I’m deeply fascinated by socio-technical systems—how social dynamics shape technical architectures, and how those architectures, in turn, influence teams. In my free time, I like to explore scalability challenges and design patterns, and I share my thoughts and solutions on my blog.

Konstantinos Chatzinikolakis

Konstantinos Chatzinikolakis

Head of Engineering & Product, eFront

I'm currently leading the Engineering and Product teams at eFront, a learning management system used globally in corporate and academic settings. My background combines software architecture, team leadership, and product strategy, with a focus on scalable systems, developer experience, and continuous delivery. I enjoy mentoring teams on how to turn ideas into impactful, well-engineered solutions and look forward to supporting the next generation of innovators during the hackathon.

Christos Xanthos

Christos Xanthos

Lead Software Engineer

Holding a Computer Science degree. More than 15 years experience in developing internet services, more than 10 years working on and setting e-learning trends. Was having fun coding before Stack Overflow existed - let alone AI chatbots. Stretching agile methodologies to their limits. Latest hobby is getting lost in the labyrinth of modernizing legacy codebases.

Yannis Aikaterinidis

Yannis Aikaterinidis

Principal Software Engineer

Yannis Aikaterinidis is a lead software engineer currently leading development efforts in the Growth Squad at Epignosis. He works on features and integrations that support the growth of TalentLMS, contributing as a backend developer across the platform. In the past, his work has focused on core feature development, scalability and efficiency, and team leadership, helping shape the evolution of TalentLMS, one of the leading cloud learning platforms. He holds a Ph.D. from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of the University of Patras, and both B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from the Electronic and Computer Engineering Department of the Technical University of Crete. He is the author of 14 publications in international conferences and journals in the area of distributed computing systems. Previously, he worked as a Software Engineer and Research Engineer in various research programs, bringing deep technical expertise in distributed systems and applied computing. He also served as a Lecturer at the Hellenic Mediterranean University, where he taught and mentored students in core computer science subjects.