Bone density builder wins top prize at food hackathon

A whipped cottage cheese product to help premenopausal women maintain their bone density won top honors Nov. 9 at the 2025 Food Hackathon, sponsored by Entrepreneurship at Cornell and the Cornell Institute for Food Systems.

The weekend event involved more than 150 undergraduate and graduate students from across Cornell who set about to address challenges posed by industry partners related to dairy, honey, fermentation and food waste.

After two days of working on their products, teams pitched to panels of judges on Sunday morning, with 11 finalist teams presenting during finals on Sunday afternoon.

"We ordered things from Wegmans and whipped it up in one of our friends' townhouse kitchens," said Ella Hufnagel '29, a food science major in CALS and one of the team members from the winning team, which earned $3,000. "We weren't able to get all of the products we would have used, specifically the functional items, but we would have them for future competitions."

Shirin Ghorbani '28, an applied economics and management major from the Dyson School, said she was inspired to think about the product after talking with her mom, who is dealing with pre-menopausal symptoms and has been trying various medications and herbs, including red algae, a popular calcium supplement.

"We got a lot of guidance from mentors on what direction to take," said Darby Sale, a food science major in CALS, who said the team first considered incorporating food waste into their product, but decided against it based on mentor feedback. Mentors also helped them think about how to make the product last longer in the dairy section.

The prize for the most market-ready product went to a team who created a rice pudding fortified with calcium and other natural ingredients for a target market of older people. The team won $2,000.

"One of our major challenges was coming up with an idea that was marketable, feasible and useful for people, which we came up with by thinking about all of our disciplines," said Grace Dorward '26, a global development and agricultural sciences major in CALS, and part of the team, which also included food science and civil engineering majors.

A team of more than 30 alumni, industry representatives, faculty and staff acted as mentors and judges throughout the weekend.

"This hackathon is a perfect platform for investing in the next generation, to allow them to innovate the next generation of products," said Rohit Kapoor, vice president of product research at Dairy Management Incorporated, a farmer-funded non-profit organization from Chicago. "It's astonishing to see that in this 1½ days, once the theme is given to them, they are able to come up with these brilliant ideas."

Jason Jacobs '97, vice president of quality and tech services for Beech Nut Nutrition, said he heard many ideas during the weekend that could apply to his company's products. "It's an opportunity to be around people who are passionate about food, new products and innovation," he said. "Students had a lot of questions about food safety, processing and quality considerations. I tried to help students understand if they were going to make a product, they had to make it safe."

Along with the cash prizes, many of the teams won mentorship opportunities, trips to conferences such as those sponsored by Grow-NY and Entrepreneurship at Cornell and memberships in professional groups such as the Upcycled Food Association.

There will be four more hackathons in the spring semester:

• Animal Health, Feb. 20-22, Cornell University
• Digital Agriculture, Feb. 27-March 1, Cornell University
• Health, March 6-8, New York City
• AI, March 13-15, New York City