Hackathon: Feeding the Future Gent

Girls 14-19: Tackle real food security challenges! Work with ILVO researchers in a 2-day STEM hackathon & pitch at Mutation Festival.

Are you ready to shape the future of how Europe eats?

Across the European Union, women make up half the workforce but remain a fraction of those designing the technology that grows, moves, stores, and sells our food. We're here to change that.

Join us for Feeding the Future Gent, an immersive two-day hackathon exclusively for girls aged 14 to 19. This isn't just about learning; it's about doing. You'll tackle real-world food security and safety challenges alongside actual scientists, and then build and pitch your tech solutions live to a festival audience.

Because when girls hold the laptops and design the solutions, the future of food changes for everyone.

Please note that the day 1 event location is ILVO (**********Brusselsesteenweg 370, 9090 Merelbeke-Melle, Belgium)

Participation is obligatory for the two days

Are you a girl age 14 to 19 who like solving real challenges? Learn together in this hackathon and solve one of these 2 challenges:

Challenge Track 1: Improving soil quality against extreme weather driven by climate change.
Challenge Track 2: Short chains: ten kilometres, not ten thousand. Digital tools that connect local producers to local eaters.

Prizes:
1st place: 500 euros
2nd place: 300 euros
3rd place: 200 euros

Agenda

DAY 1 — Friday 20 November · ILVO, Melle****· “See the problem”****

• 09:00 - 09:30: Introduction to the hackathon and Girls Go STEM program by EIT Food & EIT Digital.

• 09:30 - 10:30: “Meet the problem” — three 15-minute case talks, one per challenge track, and one inspirational case

• 10:30 - 10:45: Small break

• 10:45 - 12:00: Tour of the robots + small demonstration (e.g. autonomous sampling with the SQAT robot) on an available ILVO field

• 12:00 - 13:00: Lunch break:Lunch with researchers: four ILVO women researchers rotate among tables

• 13:00 - 15:00: Supervised completion of the Girls Go STEM thematic course: Feeding the Future: Tech Solutions for Food Security and Safety.

• 15:00 - 15:30: Break

• 15:30 - 16:30: Challenge launch, team formation, and teamwork for the GGS challenge. Problem-framing sprint: Each team writes one problem sentence and has it challenged by a mentor

Ideation: divergent thinking, three candidate ideas per team

• 16:30 - 17:00: Final quiz; facilitators will be on hand, with an immediate retake slot for anyone scoring below 75%

• 17:30 Optional: Concert at Wintercircus - Mutation Festival

DAY 2 — Saturday 21 November · Wintercircus, Ghent · Mutation Festival ·*****“Solve it in public”***

• 09:00 - 09:15: Arrival, team stand-up, goal for the day

• 09:15 - 10:00: Converge: each team picks one idea and defines what it will build; the second course-completion retake slot runs in parallel

• 10:00 - 11:30: Build sprint 1 with rotating mentor clinics — data, business model, design, food science

• 11:30 - 12:30: Maker session in the festival workshop space: physical prototyping

• 12:30 - 13:30: Lunch and free exploration of the Mutation Festival expo

• 13:30 - 15:00: Build sprint 2 and pitch coaching — structure, story, stage presence

• 15:00 - 16:00: Dry-run pitches with structured peer feedback against the published rubric

• 16:00 - 17:00: PUBLIC PITCH FINAL on the festival stage — 2 min per team, with a jury of five

• 17:00 - 17:30: Jury deliberation, with a “what next in STEM” panel running alongside

• 17:30 - 18:00 Award ceremony, certificates, group photograph

• 18:00 Optional: Concert at Wintercircus - Mutation Festival