This year’s 24-hour hackathon event brought together the global AspenTech community to code the future and solve our customers’ biggest challenges. This hybrid (in-person and virtual) event was an excellent occasion for attendees to learn about recent AspenTech technologies, explore innovative ideas, engage with new colleagues, show creativity and critical thinking and to compete for prizes.

Part of AspenTech’s annual Tech Summit, the hackathon provided employee teams 24 hours to develop new, innovative solutions in areas ranging from sustainability to self-optimizing plants to artificial intelligence and digitalization.

At the end of the event, each team recorded a presentation of their project for a committee of AspenTech engineers and executives; four were then chosen to present their projects during the 2022 AspenTech Tech Summit.

Scenes of the AspenTech 2022 hackathon – teams across the globe.

With participants from nine different countries working on cross-functional teams, the hackathon was an excellent chance for attendees to expand their professional network and make new connections with other members of the AspenTech community.

Collaboration was front-and-center; more than half of the teams had participants from different business units and more than 70 percent had team members from multiple offices – several teams even included members from different international offices. The diversity of perspectives and backgrounds was highlighted by many as the key component for a successful project.

In addition to the projects, participants had the chance to speak with mentors (industry experts) to discuss strategic, business and technical aspects of the projects. Virtual workshops also helped extend attendees’ technical knowledge in artificial intelligence (AI), user experience (UX), how to develop a new business model and how to pitch an idea.

What participants had to say:
“In the typical course of our business, we don’t get a lot of opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. This is a really important opportunity because we get to work on our code with people in sales and those delivering projects directly to our customers.” – Tom Niedzielski, Senior Software Engineer, Medina

“I signed up for the hackathon because I wanted to learn more about software development skills, artificial intelligence and machine learning. In the actual process of preparing for this, my favorite part was getting to work with people from different teams and collaborating with colleagues I don’t usually get to work with.” – Chumeng (Anastasia) Wang, Software Quality Engineer, Shanghai