A total of 85 students at the Jerusalem College of Technology undertook more than 20 industry-driven challenges in 48 hours at the 10th annual “Great Minds Hackathon,” building practical solutions across AI, health tech, education and defense.
Haredi and dati leumi (national religious) JCT students from Israel and around the world—from India to the United States—collaborated intensively at the hackathon, organized by the College’s Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center, to develop innovative solutions to global challenges.
Over the course of two days, teams worked to design, create proofs-of-concept and pitch solutions addressing challenges in health care, education, fintech, defense and venture capital.
Taking the top prize was ReMind, a scalable platform tackling the high dropout rate in youth therapy. The team created a “zero-friction” bridge between clinics and homes, gamifying the therapeutic journey for children while providing therapists with actionable, data-driven insights—a solution designed for real-world implementation.
“We saw that there were many attractive challenges, but we were looking for something that would genuinely offer a real solution to a problem that truly touches the heart. That’s how we came across this challenge, which presented a concrete, meaningful problem. We decided that even if we didn’t win, we wanted to work on something we genuinely connected to,” said Israel Shteinberg of ReMind.
Second-place team SmartTest automated the tedious task of grading handwritten exams. Powered by Vision Language Models (VLM), the platform delivers fast, accurate and scalable results for the $300 billion education sector.
The third-place team, The Roots, solved a common venture-capital problem: conducting manual, time-consuming due diligence on potential businesses to invest in. Their AI agent extracts data from pitch decks, conducts market research, flags risks in real time and allows investors explore startups via a conversational interface.
Other standout teams included NexaNav, which tackled navigating in environments where GPS signals are blocked or unreliable. Their platform uses advanced signal processing to guide users safely, a technology with clear applications in defense. Recognized for best presentation at the competition, SignalCap developed an AI-powered platform that helps startup founders manage equity, run funding scenarios and extract key data from legal contracts—making complex startup finance tasks faster and easier.
The hackathon was judged by senior leaders from Israel’s technology, venture capital and defense sectors, who evaluated teams not only on technical execution but also on business viability and scalability. The panel included Gabi Levenberg (CYE), Lt. Col. (Res.) Avi Avraham (Dor Information Technologies), Dotan Levi (NVIDIA), Noam Fraenkel (JFrog), Aaron Zucker (Sapir Venture Partners) and Yaron Magal (ICAP).
“Our students demonstrated not just creativity, but the ability to execute under pressure,” said Orlee Guttman, co-founder of the Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center. “In 48 hours, they turned complex, real-world challenges into working technology showing the technical rigor, problem-solving and focus needed in high-stakes environments.”
The Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center runs innovation programs throughout the year for JCT students, graduates and faculty, ranging from introductory entrepreneurship training and seminars on emerging technologies to pre-accelerator and accelerator programs that support innovators as they bring their ideas to fruition.
With the conclusion of the hackathon, the work for many teams was just beginning as they explored next steps toward product development and commercialization, highlighting Great Minds’ role as a launchpad for Israel’s next generation of founders.
