UCLA IEEE Idea Hacks 2026

By AGTE, AARUSH

May 29, 2026

IDEA Hacks is the premier hardware-focused hackathon on the West Coast. Hosted by IEEE’s Student Branch at UCLA during 36 hours on April 24-26, it provided hundreds of students from UCLA and local community colleges with an opportunity to develop their own tangible products. Throughout the experience, the organizers provided parts, tools, space, food, and workshops all for free, so these students could focus solely on their projects.

This year was the 12th anniversary of IDEA Hacks; and the theme — “A Brighter Future” — encouraged students to bring an electrifying mix of innovation and energy to our hackathon. The three subcategories were:

Renovate the Future: Reduce waste by making something old new again, change the functionality of an existing invention or give it a new functionality.
Fashion the Future: The world is your canvas, create something that is visually appealing, or involves the creation of art. From wearables to music production to painting to drawing make something that improves your life and just maybe looks nice.
- DigiKey Smart Fashion Using QWIIC
Educate the Future: Develop educational technology, learning platforms, and tools that transform how we teach and learn.

Attendance

IDEA Hacks reached a diverse audience, with 200 applicants this year coming from a wide range of backgrounds. Approximately 120 students competed, with a total of 24 projects submitted for judging.

Students participated from UCLA, CSUN, Cerritos College, Northeastern, Pierce College, Sacramento State, El Camino College, CSULA, LMU, Cal Poly Pomona, UCSD, and Santa Monica College.

The students attending IDEA Hacks had diverse technical backgrounds, different levels of hands-on experience (purely electrical to purely mechanical knowledge), and years of project experience to students only getting started in engineering. Idea Hacks supports students of all backgrounds with multiple technical workshops and abundant technical support from volunteers to ensure that as many students as possible can learn and have a valuable experience. Partnerships with other student organizations helped increase diversity in the event’s leadership and included the following organizations:

American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
IEEE Women Advancing Technology through Teamwork (IEEE WATT)
Association for Computing Machinery at UCLA (ACM)

There were 10 judges composed of industry representatives, faculty, and UCLA alumni who judged the 20 submissions over two rounds.

Winning Projects

The judges were impressed by all of the students’ projects. A complete list of final submissions is available on the Devpost (https://idea-hacks-2026.devpost.com/) and here are the winners:

Sponsorships

Sponsorships were essential to the success of IDEA Hacks 2026. Beyond providing funds for parts, food, the venue, and other supplies, students loved interacting with sponsors. Talking with corporate partners was one of the most popular components of IDEA Hacks. There were six key sponsors: Digi-Key, Teledyne FLIR OEM, Texas Instruments, Silvus Technologies, PCBWay, and Espressif.

Future Recommendations

In future hackathons, it would be good to have a more diverse use of hardware/boards. Directors should encourage students to look beyond just Raspberry Pis and ESP32s. If the directors can promote the use of more advanced/specialized systems, it could attract greater interest from companies looking to showcase their products, while also giving students broader exposure to different hardware platforms.

First Place Overall: LABKickstart

Second Place Overall: CPR Trainer

Third Place Overall: TransLyte

Educate the Future Winner: VisualiMU

Fashion the Future Winner: Flic

Renovate the Future Winner: Somna

Digi-Key Track Winner: Popup Streetlight