Two students from the University of Arkansas at Monticello (UAM) participated on a team that recently won third place at the AI Hackathon and HealthTech Startup Week competition in Little Rock. 

The event, held at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA Little Rock) from June 8 to 12, was open to high school and college students from Arkansas and surrounding states. Hosted through a collaboration between UA Little Rock, local health care providers, NVIDIA and Google, participants from a variety of health, technical and business backgrounds of all experience levels were brought together to earn AI certifications, learn from health care professionals and solve real-world challenges using AI tools. 

This event was the first hackathon experience for UAM students Pronita Ghimire, a freshman double majoring in computer science and mathematics with a data science option, and Kshitiz Khatiwada, a sophomore double majoring in computer information systems with a cybersecurity concentration and mathematics with a data science option. Friends since high school in Kathmandu, Nepal, the two were eager to participate to advance their knowledge and skills.

Students in attendance were divided into six teams. Each team was given a unique healthcare challenge to solve during the competition. The common goal for each team was to solve their problem using technology and AI. One team was asked to improve therapy for individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Another team was asked to figure out how to help people understand their health insurance options. Ghimire and Khatiwada’s team was asked to improve maternal health care for women in rural communities in Arkansas. 

Using data and resources provided by the event’s collaborators, the team developed Materna, a wearable health monitoring platform. Materna consists of three main components: a wearable bracelet, a mobile application and an AI-powered monitoring system. The bracelet tracks a patient’s vitals, including heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels and skin temperature, and sends this data to the mobile application. The mobile application securely transmits the data to the patient’s designated physician. Meanwhile, the AI monitoring system tracks the data in real time, assigning the patient a green, yellow or red risk status that appears on both the mobile application’s interface and indicator lights on the bracelet. If urgent care is needed, the system updates the interface and indicator lights to red and automatically contacts health providers. It also serves as a chatbot, allowing patients to log symptoms and questions for future reference. 

All teams pitched their final projects through an oral presentation and a live demonstration before a panel of judges and the public at the Demo-and-Pitch Showcase on June 12. Materna won third place and a $3,000 prize.

The experience allowed Ghimire and Khatiwada to apply the knowledge and skills they learned at UAM to a real-world challenge while building confidence in their technical abilities. Khatiwada said working with real data and solving an actual problem strengthened his confidence, while Ghimire said the experience showed her she could develop a fully deployable mobile application.

Brian Hairston, dean of the School of Computer Information Systems at UAM, said, “The School of CIS is incredibly proud of our students Pronita Ghimire and Kshitiz Khatiwada for their performance in the AI Hackathon and HealthTech Startup Week competition. Their ability to work well as part of a team and think outside of the box to integrate mobile application technology with AI-driven monitoring tools to address real-world health issues facing rural communities is precisely the type of innovative thinking that is highly sought after in today’s IT workforce. Both Ms. Ghimire and Mr. Khatiwada are outstanding students and regularly display strong logical reasoning and analytical thinking skills in their courses, and their strong performance in the hackathon is a testament to their intelligence, level of skill and work ethic.”

Although the event concluded in June, several members of the team, including Ghimire and Khatiwada, continue exploring the possibility of making Materna available to the public. 

Dr. Shuneize Slater, dean of the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at UAM, said, “Kshitiz Khatiwada and Pronita Ghimire are two of the brightest students to pass through the mathematics department here at UAM. It did not surprise us at all to hear of their accomplishment, and we are so proud to be able to say they are ours!”

For more information about the School of Computer Information Systems at UAM, contact Dean Brian Hairston at harstonb@uamont.edu or 870-460-1538. For more information about the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at UAM, contact Dr. Shuneize Slater at slaters@uamont.edu or 870-460-1116.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2026 at 12:43 am and is filed under UAM News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.