From the moment he saw a LinkedIn post about Stanford University’s annual TreeHacks hackathon, Ular Kimsanov ’27 knew he wanted in.

“I remember thinking ‘wow, this is so cool, I need to be a part of something like this,’” Kimsanov said. “I didn’t even really know what a hackathon was. I told myself that when applications opened the next year, I was applying no matter what.”

True to his word, the Computer Science major from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, applied for this year’s hackathon, was accepted, and attended the 36-hour event, which brought together hackers from across the country to turn their technological ideas into real projects. At the start, Kimsanov underestimated the scale of the event.

“When I got the acceptance letter, I was genuinely shocked. They stated that out of over 15,900 applications, they selected around 1,100 participants, less than a 7% acceptance rate,” he said. “I watched their intro video, saw the schedule of what was ahead, key speakers like Sam Altman, the CEO and cofounder of OpenAI, and Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator, that’s when it really hit me how big this was.”

Once admitted, Kimsanov moved quickly to form a team by reaching out to other participants on Slack.

“I knew that if I wanted a real shot at winning, I needed to find a team early and start working on our idea as soon as possible,” he said. “I was already proud of myself just for being in the same room as these people. I messaged the ones whose skills and experience matched what I was looking for, and that’s how we locked in our team before the hackathon even started.”

The team used what Kimsanov described as a “reverse engineering” strategy to guide their project development.

“Instead of starting with the code, we first chose the tracks we wanted to compete in, and we locked in Zoom [an education track] and HeyGen [a technology-sponsored track] as our primary ones,” he explained. “Then we started from the end, ‘what do we actually want our final demo and presentation to look like?’ From there, we worked backwards and only built the things that would show up in that demo. No authentication, no extra features, no fluff. Just what mattered for the final product.”

Kimsanov’s team wound up winning in both tracks with Minerva, an AI tutor designed to make personalized education more accessible.

“Winning twice at a competition of that scale felt incredible,” Kimsanov said. “But I also think it was earned; my teammates and I were heads-down grinding for the full 36 hours. I personally got about two hours of sleep across the three days of the hackathon. So yeah, I’m really proud of what we pulled off.

“The question we kept coming back to was ‘can we make that kind of high-quality, personalized education available to everyone without the high cost?’ That’s what Minerva is. It’s an AI-powered avatar tutor that looks and talks like a real person. Instead of just handing out answers, she asks guiding questions to help students work through problems on their own, the way the best teachers do.”

Minerva can also draw graphs and generate animations or other interactive visuals in real time. At the end of each session, parents can also access a report of what their student learned, and other strengths and areas for improvement.

Kimsanov’s team won Ray-Ban Meta glasses, AirPods Pro, Amazon gift cards, and software credits, but he said the professional doors that were opened were the real prize.

“The bigger thing was the career opportunities, companies reaching out and expressing interest in working with us in a more formal capacity.”

Looking ahead, Kimsanov said the experience affirmed his path in Computer Science.

“It was an incredible experience all around. Connecting with so many passionate and talented people, meeting representatives from top companies, and just having fun building something meaningful in a short amount of time,” he said. “I think it’s opened up a lot of doors for me, and I’m excited to see where things go from here as I keep moving forward on my journey.”