Badger BuildFest 2026 brought about 200 students from across the UW-Madison campus for 24 hours of building. They produced nearly 50 projects across three tracks, with support from more than 30 mentors, judges and sponsors and seven student orgs hosting tables.
Track winners were announced Sunday, and challenge winners were announced Wednesday, September 30, at the Sprint Kickoff & Problem Drop where we keep the momentum going. Thank you to everyone who built, mentored, judged, sponsored and hosted.
Track winners
Applied AI & Automation, presented by Google
- 1st: Lipedia. A daily skin lab: a quick face scan scores six skin metrics, an ML model counts acne lesions, and an AI agent turns it into a daily plan.
- 2nd: Jellyfish. Answers questions from a company’s knowledge base, links back to its sources, and flags pages that go stale after edits.
Emerging Technology & Entrepreneurship, presented by the Wisconsin School of Business
- 1st: GoGo. Indoor navigation for people with disabilities, guiding users once they’re inside a building.
- 2nd: Ludify. A 3D open-world learning game that turns a teacher’s own lessons into something students can explore.
Health, Sustainability & Society, presented by the Tech Exploration Lab
- 1st: Hera. Supports the pregnancy care journey, starting with matching women to the right specialist based on insurance, cost and location.
- 2nd: HappyBill. Uses public data on negotiated healthcare prices to help people negotiate their medical bills.
Challenge winners
The Cost-of-Care Conversation, presented by the UW School of Veterinary Medicine (Brundage Lab)
- 1st: Isthmus Care. A shared exam-room screen that turns a vet estimate into a clear plan: essential today, recommended soon and nice to have, fitted to the owner’s budget.
- 2nd: Vigilant Health Compass. Real Wisconsin clinic prices so pet owners can compare costs and build an estimate before the visit.
Closing the Gap in Women’s Health, presented by the Tech Exploration Lab Digital Health Challenge
- 1st: Hera. Pregnancy care navigation that matches women to the right specialist based on insurance, cost and location.
- 2nd: Phase. Tracks symptoms like fatigue, pelvic pain and mood over time and turns them into insights to bring to a doctor.
Badgers Building for Badgers, presented by DoIT Academic Technology
- 1st: ChalkPal. A magic whiteboard that combines your voice with where your pen is: circle a spot, say “plot sin(x),” and it draws it.
- 2nd: GoGo. Indoor navigation for people with disabilities, picking up where map apps stop.
Databricks Real-World Workflows, presented by Xorbix Technologies
- 1st: Assay. Used Databricks to tackle AI alignment, with in-depth testing and a strong human-in-the-loop feedback system.
- 2nd: Jellyfish. Company knowledge-base answers with sources, flagging pages that go stale after edits.
Open Venture, presented by Strato VC
- 1st, tie: Jellyfish and HappyBill.
The Art of the Break, presented by the Tech Exploration Lab and judged with Meta
- Winner (cash prize and a named feature in our industry brief): My Magic UW. The team found that their answer checker confirmed quotes were real but never checked that the sentences citing them were right, then kept testing until their fix held up on the live agent.
- Honorable mentions: Proxier, Assay and MorrowLab, each featured in our upcoming industry brief.
Multiple winners
Some teams stood out more than once:
- Jellyfish: 3 awards. Applied AI & Automation 2nd, Databricks Real-World Workflows 2nd and Open Venture 1st (tie).
- Hera: 2 awards. Health, Sustainability & Society 1st and Closing the Gap in Women’s Health 1st.
- GoGo: 2 awards. Emerging Technology & Entrepreneurship 1st and Badgers Building for Badgers 2nd.
- HappyBill: 2 awards. Health, Sustainability & Society 2nd and Open Venture 1st (tie).
- Assay: 2 awards. Databricks Real-World Workflows 1st and Art of the Break honorable mention.
Thank you to our judges
- Tracks: Christopher Mende (Google), Christopher Harrison (PrismScope), Frank Hansen (Kinetic Solutions), Tejvir Mann (Target), Michael Szewczyk (Okkanti) and Esther Kang (UW)
- Challenges: David Brundage (UW Brundage Lab), Michael Szewczyk, Adhira Sunkara, the DoIT Academic Technology team, Tyler Faulkner and Patrick Marshall (Xorbix), Christian Kaczmarczyk (Third Prime), Cade Thayer (Strato VC), Sai Nagabhairava (Meta) and Shivansh Gupta (Tech Exploration Lab)
What’s next
BuildFest was the start. The Four-Week Sprint kicked off September 30, and it’s open to every team, plus anyone who missed the weekend. There, students put what they built in front of real users and find out what holds up. It’s not too late to join. Week 2 is Wednesday, October 7. Join the Sprint →