Maiah Iseminger and Daley Trost, undergraduates at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR), earned first place in the state’s first-ever Food Policy Hackathon.
A multitude of UH Mānoa students from CTAHR were among teams that gathered from across the state to address food insecurity, one of Hawaiʻi’s most pressing problems in a time of increased food costs. Iseminger and Trost proposed a pilot program to help public school families make sure they have enough food during a natural disaster by retrofitting kitchens and creating a food storage area.Their pilot would include one school in a hurricane evacuation area from every state Department of Education complex.
“It was rewarding to use creativity to try and solve a real world problem,” said Iseminger, a senior in CTAHR’s Institute for Sustainability and Resilience program.
Innovative and impactful solutions
The two-day hackathon brought together bright minds to tackle key issues identified during the 2025 Hawaiʻi Food Summit. Participants were challenged to collaborate, research and design innovative policy solutions, leading up to concise and impactful five-minute presentations.
“Seeing so many minds work toward a shared goal was uplifting,” said Trost, a sophmore in natural resources and environmental management. “And when you are in the same physical space as others, it creates respect for them and their opinions.”
Both students are now developing a policy proposal to address food import dependence and insecurity in Hawaiʻi for their environmental policy course.
The Hawaiʻi Food Policy Hackathon was co-sponsored by the Stupski Foundation and Hawaiʻi Food+ Policy which is an internship program that empowers college students and young farmers to become advocates for a more sustainable and resilient food system in Hawaiʻi.
