Awards

Prize Breakdown

Awards recognize outstanding work across categories such as Best Overall Project, Best Open Science, Best Methods, and Best Visualization. Final prize assignments will be announced during the hackathon.

Sponsor	Prize	Notes
	$10000	Sponsors the 1st Overall Winner ($7,000) and 2nd Overall Winner ($3,000) awards
	$5,000 total (distributed as two prizes: $3k + $2k)	Sponsored by Covalent Metrology — supporting outstanding teams with a total of $5,000
	Compute credits worth $5,000	Compute credits on Mat3ra.com for the winning team.
	Mystery Prize	Accompanied with Overall Winner Award
	$1000	Sponsors one of the main award categories (to be announced at the final judging).
	$500	Sponsors one of the main award categories (to be announced at the final judging).
	Merchandise and supporting resources	May accompany another prize or serve as a special recognition award.
	$500 + Student registration to Pre-Meeting Congress (PMC) at MSA 2026, Milwaukee	Awarded to the top student team by the MSA Student Council (MSA StC).
	$1000	Prize sponsored by Toyota Research Institute (TRI) for Best Interactivity, recognizing dynamic and performant solutions for human-AI collaborations.
	$500	Sponsored award from Waviks.
	$1000 + Access to Polaron platform	Sponsored award providing $1000 and access to the Polaron AI materials platform.
	TBD	Local prize for the University of Toronto site, sponsored by Hitachi High-Technologies Canada Inc.
	$1000	Award sponsored for best AFM/SPM project
	$500	Award sponsored for one projects

Exact prize-to-category mapping will be finalized based on submissions and judging outcomes.

These prizes celebrate creativity, collaboration, and the spirit of open science at the Hackathon.