The Data4Good Festival empowers Europe’s brightest young minds to use data science and AI to tackle pressing global issues: from migration to climate change, from social equity to democratic innovation.
Together, we’re building a future where data serves the common good.
About the Data4Good Festival
The Data4Good Festival is an annual 3-day event at the Hertie School aimed at empowering the next generation of young scientists and innovators to tackle pressing societal challenges using data-driven solutions.
Bringing together bachelor's students from across Europe, the festival fosters creativity, collaboration, and impactful innovations that benefit the common good.
To date, it is the only hackathon and data event in Europe exclusively for bachelor’s students, with generous scholarship support.
Talks and workshops led by data experts
We enrich the learning experience of the festival with expert workshops and talks on data science skills and research. In 2025, we have tutorials on coding with AI, creating chatbot for event and how data science team and projects work at Accenture.
Hackathon for the social good
The core of the Data4Good Festival is a hackathon where students tackle real-world challenges using data-driven approaches. This hands-on experience will focus on enhancing students' technical skills by working on real datasets. Students can win cash prizes, swag bags, access to premium data science learning resources among other awards.
Social games and networking
Students also get to enjoy social games night and other networking opportunities with fellow participants and workshop experts to learn and establish new friendships and mentorship.
Challenge 1: Harnessing Open Data for Municipal Innovation
Presented by Bertelsmann Stiftung, this challenge invites participants to dive into the Wegweiser Kommune Portal dataset—a comprehensive resource featuring over 400 indicators covering key dimensions of municipal life in Germany. This dataset has been a cornerstone for municipal analysis since 2006, regularly updated with the latest insights.
Challenge 2: Uncovering Stories and Insights from Holocaust Documentation
Presented by Accenture in collaboration with the Arolsen Archives, this challenge invites participants to work with historical data that documents the crimes of the Holocaust, aiming to honor the memory of its victims and safeguard the integrity of the archives. Participants will help advance the digital transformation of this vital historical record, building tools and insights that contribute to education, remembrance, and historical justice.
The first-place award for Technical Excellence went to two teams: D Squared – Data Detectives (Sindre Veum, Leonardo Reche, Zsanett Frei, Amory Mayer, and Andrea Kojovic) from Forward College and Unconstrained (Ali Guliyev, Denis Hoti, Ruslan Tsibirov, Veronika Rybak, and Olga Ivanov) from Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Data Detectives presented M3 – a Municipal Metrics Mapper, which visualises and summarises all the indexes that matter for a German municipality, from quality of life to eco-friendliness and economic success. Unconstrained created a mapping of journeys that Holocaust victims had to endure based on the dataset provided by the Arolsen Archives.
The first-place award went to Quantum Quack (Henry Oldroyd, Andre Mariucci, Polina Markova, and Shahar Dagan) from the University of Lancaster and to Crtl+Alt+Defeat (Dina Schaller, Oliver Solenský, Charlotte Dawson-Townsend, and Hanna Flügel) from Forward College. Quantum Quack presented a prototype that automates the detection of inconsistencies in Holocaust documents. Crtl+Alt+Defeat presented Wekomda, a platform for connecting and comparing different German municipalities based on their similar attributes for collaborative solutions.
The first-place award went to Change Byte by Byte (Jim Maar, Louis Henkel, Emil Rugenstein, and Merel Fiets) from the Hasso-Plattner Institute, Humbolt-Universität, and Leiden University. Their presentation featured Wegweising4Tomorrow, an interface for German politicians to analyse climate and socioeconomic metrics in their districts. The application provides data visualisation and insights to support informed decision-making.
