RiskON 2026 Student Hackathon: "Transforming Uncertainty into Opportunity"

RiskON brings together students and finance professionals to tackle real world challenges in risk management. As the academic lead partner, the Master of Science UZH ETH in Quantitative Finance  connects students with strong backgrounds in mathematics, statistics, data science, AI, technology, economics and finance to develop solutions to four challenges from the financial sector.

The student hackathon was developed and launched in 2023 by

• Prof. Walter Farkas, Professor of Quantitative Finance and Program Director of the MSc UZH ETH in Quantitative Finance
• Dr. Daniel Fasnacht, Program Director and Senior Lecturer in Executive Education at the University of Zurich
• Dr. Maria Olivares, Head of Innovation at the UZH Innovation Hub

The event aims to advance risk management in Switzerland by bringing together fresh perspectives from students with the expertise of experienced practitioners. Participants collaborate to develop innovative solutions to financial, non-financial, and digital risks.

At its 4th edition, the RiskON Hackathon brought together 58 master’s students from universities across Switzerland and Liechtenstein to tackle real world challenges in risk management. Forming 16 interdisciplinary teams, the students had 24 hours to develop solutions to four challenges, each designed and sponsored by a leading bank. Their ideas were then presented in a pitch session and assessed by a jury of leading figures from the Swiss financial sector.

Julius Baer: AI that knows the answer - or knows who knows 

Task: The teams develop an AI assistant that answers questions about policies and compliance using only official internal sources. If the AI assistant cannot answer a question with certainty, it will forward the inquiry to the most appropriate expert. A second component monitors answers for accuracy and currency. 

 🏅 Winning Team: Linze Li, Nicolas Pafumi, Arjun Singh Bhadoria, Shivamm Warambhey and Álvaro Zamanillo Sáez

Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB): Development of a Radar for External Operational Risk Events

Task: The teams are to develop a radar prototype that automatically detects and analyses external operational risk events, classifies them in accordance with the ORX taxonomy and the bank’s business areas, ranks them according to their materiality, and presents them in a meaningful vizualisation.

 🏅 Winning Team: Kevin Qu, Cian Roarty, Yi Wei and Olga Zharkova

Vontobel: Market Data Cleansing and Enrichment for Financial Simulations

Task: Using daily observation data spanning around five years for various asset classes, the teams are tasked with identifying anomalies, realistically imputing missing data, and making retrospective adjustments to account for dividends, share splits and spin-offs.

🏅 Winning Team: Vlad Burcă, Inés Lezamiz Oleaga, Ariba Mbeche and Sebastian Persson

UBS: Build an OR (Operations Research) Agent – From Business Question to Optimal Decision

Task: The teams develop an AI agent that turns natural language business problems into formal optimization models, analyses the underlying data, solves the problem, and explains the results in actionable business terms.

🏅 Winning Team: Amine Lazrak, Nina Savas and Ali Amjid

The winning teams receive funding and academic support to further develop their solutions and explore their potential for practical application. The projects may also contribute to academic knowledge through co-authored research.

Dr. Christian Bluhm, Former Group CRO at UBS, ExposureX AG
Nicolas Brügger, Deputy Head Markets and Innovation / Head Innovation Desk, State Secretariat for International Finance SIF
Eliane Gmünder, Co-Founder, LCR Services AG and IFINITY AG
Eva Selamlar-Leuthold, Co-CEO, Eurospider Information Technology
Prof. Josef Teichmann, Professor for Financial Mathematics, ETH Zurich
Stephanie Wickihalder, President, Swiss Fintech Innovations (SFTI)
Fabienne Wikler, Senior Manager Risk Consulting Financial Services, PwC Switzerland
Daniel Zuberbühler, Former Vice Chairman FINMA, Board of Directors, Banca Popolare di Sondrio (Suisse)

Date: 1 - 2 September 2026
Location: University of Zurich (UZH)

The RiskON hackathon was hosted by the UZH Department of Finance in collaboration with UZH’s Innovation Hub and N9 House of Innovation.

Academic lead partner: Master of Science UZH ETH in Quantitative Finance 

The event was supported by leading institutions from across the Swiss financial sector:

• Lead partners: Julius Bär, UBS, Vontobel, Zürcher Kantonalbank
• Ambassador partners: LGT Private Banking, EFG International
• Strategic partners: Innovation Booster AI , Swiss Risk Association