Technology
United Nations and Baskin Engineering to host West Coast’s first ‘Reboot the Earth’ hackathon
The event will bring together developers to create technological solutions to address the climate crisis.
Press Contact
The United Nations (UN) and the Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are collaborating to bring the “Reboot the Earth” hackathon to the West Coast for the first time. This event, which will be held November 7 and 8 at the UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Center, will bring together developers to create technological solutions to address the climate crisis.
Those interested can register here for the event.
Organized by the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT), the 2025 Reboot the Earth hackathons are focused on agriculture and artificial intelligence (AI). The California event will focus on the locally relevant challenges of wildfire detection, response, and impact.
Participants can leverage open source, AI, and open data sets, along with local expertise on the environment and emergency preparedness and response. The goal is to build solutions that can become a digital public good, serving local community needs.
“Now is a crucial time for everyone, engineers and beyond, to apply their skills to develop tangible solutions to the ongoing climate crisis,” said Anne Criss, Senior Assistant Dean and Director of Climate and Sustainability Initiatives at Baskin Engineering. “This event provides our students and others in the region the opportunity to do just that, while enhancing their programming skills and collaborating with inspiring partners and mentors. I look forward to the creative solutions I know they will create.”
The event is spearheaded by the UC Santa Cruz Open Source Program Office (OSPO), which is housed within Baskin Engineering and aims to discover, support, and grow the impact of open source projects at UC Santa Cruz and throughout the UC system.
“Our team is especially passionate about supporting the next generation of open source practitioners and equipping them to be the change they want to see in the world,” said Emily Lovell, associate director of the UC Santa Cruz OSPO. “We’re honored to partner with the United Nations to support participants in tackling a climate challenge that has impacted so many of us in the local community.”
Taking advantage of UC Santa Cruz’s proximity to the tech capital of Silicon Valley, the hackathon offers participants opportunities to connect with peers, mentors, and leaders across fields, fostering new professional relationships that extend beyond the event. Winning teams will receive coaching from UN and Salesforce partners for six months after the event to scale their solutions.
The UC Santa Cruz-hosted event follows several other Reboot the Earth hackathons held around the world this year. Past events have been held in Hyderabad, India; Kigali, Rwanda; New York City; Rome, Italy; Rabat, Morocco; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Doha, Qatar.
UC Santa Cruz students interested in taking a shuttle from main campus to the event can contact Yelena Martynovskaya at ymartyno@ucsc.edu for more information.
To learn more about the Reboot the Earth initiative, visit: https://unite.un.org/en/reboot-earth.