Three Florida Tech students helped their team earn second place and a $500 check at the Space Coast Initiative: Hackathon 2026 held this spring at Groundswell Startups in Melbourne.
David Nieves-Acaron, Nathan Perez Matos and Jean Garin helped Team Orion excel in the Tinkerers Track, which involves both software and hardware such as the Internet of Things, robotics and embedded systems. (The other track was software only.) Additional team members were Ryan Huttsell and Dominic Catania.
Nieves-Acton, a Ph.D. student majoring in computer engineering, and sophomore Matos are from Adrian Peter’s Center for Advanced Data Analytics and Systems (CADAS). Peter is associate professor of mathematics and systems engineering in addition to directing CADAS.
Garin is a sophomore aerospace engineering major.
Their problem statement – the description of a real-world challenge they hoped to solve – was this: “Understanding plankton behavior, distribution, and health is essential for monitoring ocean ecosystems, yet collecting high‑resolution, long-term data on these microscopic organisms remains extremely difficult.”
Over roughly two days, the team conceived, built and began testing a prototyped concept of what Nieves-Acton described as a “simple yet cost-effective marine probe” capable of measuring and recording basic but important metrics for marine biology, including salinity levels and water temperature.
Team Orion was one of 18 Hackathon teams, and in addition to Florida Tech participating students came from Eastern Florida State, University of Florida, University of South Florida and University of Central Florida.
On hand as well were more than two dozen subject-matter experts (SMEs) to assist teams.
Judges, consisting of local business leaders, SMEs and investors with relevant technical and commercial experience, based their decisions on five categories: viability and scalability; technical execution; relevance to the Space Coast; innovation; and team commitment.
