80 students. 30 universities. 8 countries. 1 mission: Data for the Common Good.
Last weekend, the Hertie School hosted the third edition of the Data4Good Festival in Berlin. It was a marathon of workshops, technical deep dives, and late-night hacking, but more importantly, it was a reminder of what happens when ambitious young minds use their skills to tackle real societal challenges.
After 48 hours of intense work on datasets from Bertelsmann Stiftung and OpenSanctions, 16 teams presented their solutions.
Here are the winners and runners-up of the 2026 Data4Good Festival:
🏆 Technical Excellence Award
Recognizing superior coding, scalability, and innovative technical implementation.
Winner: #AVIT – “Knowledge Graph Investigate”
(Laroussi Ben Moussa, Ziyad Ismail, Ahmet Selman Güclü, Ensar Polat, Emir Ünal, Berat Karahan)
Runner-up: #BocconiBEMACS – “Tracking Power”
(Beatrice Branciamore, Nidal Hevi Oğur, Albina Ntivuguruzwa, Zhansaya Akhmetova)
Runner-up: Data 4 Good Oldenburg – “NRW: Perceived Threats in Population and State Parliaments”
(Carlotta Steimke, Charlotte Keyßler, Michel Janßen)
📖 Data Storyteller Award
Recognizing the best use of visualization and narrative to make complex data understandable.
Winner: #BipolarBears – “We are afraid of what we don’t know”
(Denis Hoti, Ruslan Tsibirov, Veronika Rybak, Aleksandra Karabutova, Olga Ivanova, Ali Guliyev)
Runner-up: #ALK – “New model of religious education”
(Drishti Roy, Daria Gromova, Lidia Czajkowska, Anastasiia Havrysh, Kasia Lagutowska and Karolina Radziejewska)
Runner-up: #HereForThePizza – “PEPPER”
(Chiara Di Leva, Jemima Wulf, Hermine Skagestad, Oliver Solenský, Timo Knaus)
🌍 Social Impact Award
Recognizing projects with the deepest insights and the highest potential for positive societal change.
Winner: #DataSiesta – “Who gets a home?”
(Plácido Velasco Muñoz, Lila Stephany Landa Pake, Laura Granda Fernández, Pedro Javier Imbroda Castellano)
Runner-up: #GIGA – “How contact reduces prejudice”
(Abdurrahman Shoman, Farouk Elfarra, Hamza Touati, Yassin Kamal, Anas Al Natsheh)
Runner-up: #StataOne–TricksMannheim – “Connecting the dots”
(Gianni Louis Fungipani, Rasmus Butschle, Luis Abeler, Thierry Hertzog, Tim Heckmann)
A massive thank you to our partners - Dr. Helena Bakic, Florian Bochert, Friedrich Lindenberg, our speakers, and every student who traveled to Berlin to participate. You proved that data science isn't just about numbers – it's about the impact we can create together.
Special thanks to the organizing team (Atul Bharti, Trayda Murakami, Farhan Shaikh, Elizabeth Cassibry, Simon Marcell Matei) and everyone at the Data Science Lab for making this weekend a reality.
See you at the next edition!
📸 Sanyam Bajaj
#Data4Good2026 #DataScience #PublicPolicy #TechForGood #Berlin #Hackathon