A group of students sit across the table from one another with laptops and technology equipment sitting between them.
Team TCC members Avaneesh Kad (right) and Cavan Moriarty (left) get feedback from mentor Dan Bibyk (center) for their project to create an alert system to warm home owners of power outages at HackOHI/O 2026. This year marked the 14th HackOHI/O, which is Ohio State's premier hack-a-thon.

Hack OHI/O: A picture of innovation

14th hack-a-thon highlights Ohio State's innovative culture

By Jodi Miller

October 27, 2026

Ohio State's culture of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit has many roots.

Few are deeper than the university's annual HackOHI/O hack-a-thon. Hosted by the OHI/O student organization, the 24-hour event brings together more than 800 students from 60-plus majors to collaborate around using technology to solve real problems.

HackOHI/O connects students with each other, but also mentors and business representatives who supply challenges for the thinkers, makers and doers to tackle. This year, both Honda and American Electric Power provided challenges that the students in attendance solved.

The hack-a-thon is only one of a suite of events sponsored by the program. Other annual events include MakeOHI/O, ShowOHI/O and High School I/O which provides students the opportunity to build with real technologies outside of the classroom and connects them with industry partners.

The 14th annual HackOHI/O event took over the Ohio Union last weekend. Take a look at photos from one of Ohio State's signature technology events.

Team Frutiger Trio (left to right) Grace Ai, Noha Muzaffer and Monique Sears work on training AI to more accurately identify patterns on plant leaves for pesticide use.
Ava Deeks gets a closer look at some coding for a project her team "Team 35" worked on at HackOHI/O 2026 at the Ohio Union. The team was building a process to import custom characters into Mario Kart.
R2 Dunkin works on wiring sensors for the team's project. Team Vision Ventures worked on building a UVC water bottle cap.
David Vance (left) and Aidan Johnson worked on a language app at HackOHI/O 2026 at the Ohio Union.
Team Vision Ventures Sur Patel takes a measurement from a circuit board. His team worked on building a UVC water bottle cap at HackOHI/O 2026 at the Ohio Union.