JANUARY 2026 HACKATHON

"Urban Futures: Co-Creating Climate Resilience in NYC"

LEAP and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), in collaboration with Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners and NVIDIA, will host “Urban Futures: Co-Creating Climate Resilience in NYC,” a citywide hackathon that brings together scientists, technologists, designers, policymakers, and community members to imagine and prototype creative, data-driven solutions for building a more resilient New York City.

Thursday, January 15 – Saturday, January 17, 2026
In-person at the American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
Apply to participate by December 12, 2025

For participants who would like to learn more about coding prior to participating in the Hackathon, please consider joining LEAP’s optional pre-Hackathon event, the Winter 2026 Momentum Bootcamp.

HACKATHON GOAL

A hackathon is a collaborative, high-energy event where participants from diverse backgrounds form interdisciplinary teams to tackle real-world problems over a concentrated period of time. “Hacking” in this sense means inventive problem-solving: combining data, design, and creativity to produce new insights or tools.

During the “Urban Futures” event, teams will explore how open data and climate models can be used to better understand and mitigate risks from climate change such as rising temperatures, stronger storms, and increased flooding, in NYC communities most vulnerable to these impacts.

HACKATHON ELIGIBILITY

We encourage applicants from a broad range of backgrounds, including NYC neighborhood leaders, data visualization + climate science, urban planning, NYC government and creative tech.

HACKATHON PARTICIPANTS

Community Members from all five boroughs will share lived experiences, local knowledge, and resilience priorities, ensuring the hackathon’s challenges are grounded in real neighborhood concerns.
Hackers—including students, researchers, civic technologists, artists, urban planners, and educators—will bring their technical, creative, and analytical skills to develop practical solutions informed by both science and community input.
City Government officials will provide context on policy goals and implementation pathways, helping bridge grassroots ideas with citywide resilience planning.
Mentors—including climate and data scientists, programmers, landscape architects, and educators from the sponsoring institutions—will guide teams in data interpretation, visualization, communication, and design.

DATA + TOOLS

Teams will have access to NYC’s extensive open data resources – covering environmental, demographic, and infrastructure information – alongside high-resolution model outputs from LEAP and other research partners (tbd). These datasets will help illuminate how climate risks vary across neighborhoods and what strategies might best mitigate them.

OUTCOME + BENEFITS

By the end of the hackathon, teams will present their projects to a panel of community experts, scientists, and policymakers. Promising ideas may inform future city planning efforts or seed ongoing collaborations among participants and partner institutions.

Together, these outcomes will help shape a shared vision for how science, data, and local knowledge can come together to ensure that all New Yorkers can thrive in a changing climate.

Judges

CHRIS BROWN
Inception Program Partner Manager
NVIDIA

HAYLEY ELSZASZ
Climate Science Advisor
NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate + Environmental Justice (MOCEJ)

Hayley is currently the Climate Science Advisor at the Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice in New York City. In this role, she oversees the Office’s academic partnerships – including the New York City Panel on Climate Change, FloodNet, and the Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation Study – and helps integrate the latest climate science into City policy. Hayley recently received her PhD in politics from the University of Virginia, where she wrote her dissertation on the role of city governments and community organizations in advancing climate mitigation policy. She also has a BA in political science from Williams College.

MICHAEL HAGGERTY
Principal, Director of Urban Planning + Design
Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects + Planners

VIVIAN TRAKINSKI
Senior Director of Science Visualization
American Museum of Natural History

Vivian Trakinski is Senior Director of Science Visualization at the American Museum of Natural History. Vivian joined the Museum in 1999 as a documentary filmmaker, spending more than a decade traveling the globe to create short films about how we study the natural world. More recently, Vivian began collaborating with scientists, artists, and programmers to produce scientifically accurate and visually compelling data driven experiences for visitors to AMNH’s immersive theaters and exhibition halls.

TIAN ZHENG
Deputy Director, LEAP
Professor of Statistics, Columbia University

Tian Zheng is a Professor of Statistics at Columbia University and Deputy Director, Chief Convergence Officer, and Education Director at LEAP. Her work focuses on developing and applying data science and AI methods to understand complex, real-world systems, with a particular interest in societal challenges such as urban resilience and community engagement for public health. Her current efforts emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration and research-integrated educational models that connect data, AI, and public impact, including her role leading the new aiX Faculty Fellowship initiative at Columbia to engage AI as a scholar topic in curricular renewal, and her leadership of Stats Up AI Alliance, a new interest group aimed at strengthening rigor in AI and data science through engaging and empowering statisticians.

Reach out to leap@columbia.edu with any questions!

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