Student Competitions

Congratulations to the winners of CSUN AI Jam 2025!

CSUN AI Jam 2025 was an exciting student competition where teams of up to two students applied Artificial Intelligence to address real-world challenges on our campus. This competition challenged students to identify a campus problem, explore possible AI-based solutions, and propose a plan to implement the solution.

Participation in AI Jam provided students with the opportunity to showcase their skills while proposing innovative solutions to enhance campus life. The competition aimed to promote creativity, collaboration, and a deeper understanding of the evolving impact of AI in our daily lives.

First Place: MataMind

• Alberto Sandoval
• Dylan Oseida

Second Place: MatAssist

• Sofiia Unkovskaia
• Leena Shah

Third Place: Olé

• Denver Cude
• Rene Montelongo

CSUN AI Jam 2025: Empowering Connection & Community 

How can AI be leveraged to truly benefit the CSUN community? AI Jam 2025 invites student teams to take on this challenge by proposing innovative ways to use AI to empower student connection and build a stronger community. Participants will explore how to apply these technologies to foster a more connected and supportive student experience in one or more of the following focus areas: 

• Campus Involvement: Facilitate meaningful peer interactions and improve access to campus resources and opportunities. 
• Community Resilience: Build long-term support networks and enhance emergency preparedness to strengthen community resilience. 
• Career Readiness: Connect students with mentors, skill-building opportunities, and career planning resources. 

Whether you're familiar with AI or just getting started, your unique perspective matters. This competition is your opportunity to make a lasting impact on our campus community.

AI Jam 2025 Kickoff Recording

Kickoff Event 

The competition started with the AI Jam 2025 Kickoff Event, where students had an opportunity to hear from guest speakers and receive the full competition guidelines. 

• March 5, 2025 | 12:00pm to 1:00pm 

• Johnson Auditorium | Live on Zoom

Requests for accommodation services (e.g., sign language interpreters or transcribers) must be made at least five (5) business days in advance. Please provide your request to the NCOD on campus by February 25, 2025 to ensure adequate time for processing.

Kickoff Keynote Speaker

Tina Austin
Lecturer and AI Adoption Specialist, USC and UCLA

AI is transforming education and careers—but the real question is, how do you make it work for you? Tina Austin, a CSUN alum who now teaches at USC on AI ethics and digital innovation, will discuss the power and pitfalls of AI in STEM. This keynote session will highlight real-world applications, ethical considerations, and strategies for using AI tools to enhance learning and career growth.

Prizes

• 1st Place: $800 + One Semester Student Employment with IT Division
• 2nd Place: $400
• 3rd Place: $200

Timeline

• March 5 - CSUN AI Jam 2025 Kickoff
• March 17 @ 12pm (Noon) - Deadline to Register for the Competition
• March 17 to April 14 - Participants Develop Proposals
• April 14 @ 12pm (Noon) - Deadline to Submit Proposal
• April 14 to 21 - Judges Evaluate Proposals
• April 25, 2025 - Winners Announced at Digital Equity Day Event

Watch the Kickoff Video

Congratulations to the winners of CSUN AI Jam 2024!

First Place: AI Academic Course Planning Program
Luis Olmos
Viashnavi Sen
Victoria Miteva

Second Place - MatBot by Chatty Matty
Connor Juman
Cameel Juman

Third place - Course Compass
Alberto Rubalcava
Alberto Sandoval

CSUN AI Jam 2024

The CSUN AI Jam 2024 has concluded! Winners will be announced soon! AI Jam was a student competition designed for teams of up to three students to apply Artificial Intelligence in addressing real-world challenges on our campus. This competition challenged students to identify a campus problem, explore possible AI-based solutions, and propose a plan to implement the solution.

Participation in AI Jam provided students with the opportunity to showcase their skills while proposing innovative solutions to enhance campus life. The competition aimed to promote creativity, collaboration, and a deeper understanding of the evolving impact of AI in our daily lives.

Prizes 

Monetary prizes, shared by the team. 

• 1st place - $1,500 and the opportunity for one semester of student employment with the CSUN Information Technology team to help bring their vision to life.

• 2nd place - $1,000 

• 3rd place - $500 

Timeline

• March 6 - CSUN AI Jam 2024 Kickoff
• March 15 @ 12pm (Noon) - Deadline to Register for the Competition
• March 15 to April 12 - Participants Develop Proposals
• April 12 @ 12pm (Noon) - Deadline to Submit Proposal
• April 13 to April 17 - Judges Evaluate Proposals
• April 19 - Winners Announced at Digital Equity Day Event

Congratulations to the winners of CSUN App Jam 2023!

First Place: Loui's Team

Second Place: Emiliano

View Emiliano's Presentation Slides

Third Place: Del Mar

View Del Mar's Presentation Slides

First Place Winner - CSUN, Go!

Second Place Winner - ArcFTC Pro

Social Butterflies - CSUN Connect

More Than Students

Studying Streamlined

A huge congratulations to the App-Jam 2021 winners!

First Place: Team Give - PartWith

Second Place: Team Abstract - ReKindle

Búme - Búme

Intelectual Bad A's - Tanda

Revisions allow you to track differences between multiple versions of your content, and revert back to older versions.

App-Jam 2021 is the latest in the CSUN student Jam competitions. App-Jam presented student teams with resources and tools to solve real-world challenges pertaining to the year’s challenge: to use a variety of technologies and tools to design, ideate, and demonstrate a custom web or mobile application to improve communication between friends, families, colleagues, and communities. Teams used tools and services to create a solution for communication issues. Students learned about app design concepts and had access to resources to compete against other student teams.

A huge congratulations to the App-Jam 2021 winners!

First Place: Team Give - PartWith

Second Place: Team Abstract - ReKindle

Búme - Búme

Intelectual Bad A's - Tanda

The AI-Jam showcase took place from 2:30 to 4:00 on Monday, April 8th in the Ferman Presentation Room.

Read the CSUN Today Article

Congratulations to all AI-Jam 2019 participants!

This year saw some great competitors, and some really amazing projects! Special congratulations to Chill^N for taking both the Best Artificial Intelligence and Best Solution Concept prizes! Head over to the competition's Portfolium page to view all the teams' videos.

AI-Jam 2019 on Portfolium

Compete as a team of 2 - 5 students, using AI and cloud technologies to solve real-world accessibility needs raised by fellow Matadors.

AI-Jam will present teams with real-world physical and digital accessibility needs. You and your team will use AI tools and services to create a solution for any one of the provided needs. Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services will provide support and resources regardless of your familiarity with AI. You will learn about AI concepts and have access to resources to compete against other student teams.

Here’s how it works:

1. RSVP for the March 4th Kickoff event

At least one team member is required to attend the kickoff, but that’s not the only reason to come! Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services will be there with experts who will be able to help you find the tools you need to make your project the best it can be. Spots go fast, so reserve as soon as possible!

2. Join a team and enroll in the Canvas course by March 8th

Teams need to be in groups of between two and five students in order to compete. AI-Jam involves some milestones that will be uploaded to Canvas, which will also act as a hub for all the learning resources provided by the top cloud providers, and by AI experts from across campus.

3. Pick from one of the accessibility needs

At the kickoff, you will learn about the challenges for AI-Jam: to address real-world accessibility needs identified by fellow Matadors. Pick one of these challenges and use AI tools to come up with an innovative solution!

4. Learn and Build

Use the resources in Canvas, and support from the community and AI experts to bring your idea to life. If you’re not a programmer, you can absolutely still participate! Many of the cloud tools can be operated in a web interface, and in conjunction with the resources in Canvas, you can piece together a feasible idea without having to write a line of code!

5. Create a video by April 3rd

Teams will also upload a 2 - 3 minute video explaining their project and showing how it could work. This video should highlight how your project addresses the accessibility need, and how you used AI to make it all work.

6. Present at the showcase on April 8th

AI-Jam culminates in a showcase 2:30pm - 4:00pm in the Ferman Presentation room, where judges will be on-hand to evaluate your project based on the practicality and creativity of your projects. There will even be AI experts on hand to look at how your project leverages the capabilities of the AI tools you use!

7. Win!

Winners will be announced at the showcase, where prizes and awards will be given to two winning teams: one for Best Artificial Intelligence, and one for Best Solution Concept. Winning teams will be granted automatic entry into the I-Corps Summer Accelerator Program, where past AI-Jam winners, such as Meebie, have taken their project to the next level! You can see all participants from AI-Jam 2018 on the AI-Jam 2018 Portfolium page.

Latest Updates

The AI-Jam competition has completed! In this competition, students from all over campus solved a problem using artificial intelligence tools, learned about AI concepts and had access to resources to compete against peers for prizes and awards.

Winners

Congratulations to our six AI-Jam winners. Three teams from the Research track and three teams from the Innovation track were selected as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. See the diagram below for more information on the AI-Jam tracks. Thank you to all 12 teams who participated!

Research 

1st: KLab's Butterflies -  Artificial intelligence and a robot mimic a child with a behavioral or learning challenge to better teach and train students how to work with real children who may experience similar reactions. View the team's Portfolium entry to learn more.

2nd: AI-Adventurers - An innovative approach to food and healthy eating using artificial intelligence and image recognition to better help us portion control and lead more healthy lifestyles. View the team's Portfolium entry to learn more.

3rd: Helia Nutrition and Health - Increases accuracy of one's food log by using artificial intelligence and image recognition to track an individual's intake to improve health and increase health awareness. View the team's Portfolium entry to learn more.

Innovation

1st: AI-Amigos - A tool to help students excel their career by using a chatbot on facebook to answer any questions the student may have about the CSUN Career Center. View the team's Portfolium entry to learn more.

2nd: Deaf Connect - Using machine learning and natural language processing, this artificial intelligence project helps the deaf community to have more resources such as speech to text translation. View the team's Portfolium entry to learn more. 

3rd: AI-Caramba - This artificial intelligence project uses natural language processing to recognize voice commands through Alexa to help students find information about the career center in a more intuitive and friendly manner. View the team's Portfolium entry to learn more.

How AI-Jam Works

Students entered as teams and selected from one of two tracks: Innovation or Research.
Open an accessible PDF version of the image below.