Main prize at “Hack4Sages” goes to our students
Excerpt from our students’ competition presentation
Maksymilian Paczyński and Krzysztof Dąbrowski, students of the Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, together with their team, won the main prize at the international “Hack4Sages” hackathon. The winning group also included Zofia Winnicka from Oxford University and Kacper Lisik from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. As their prize, the team will travel to the Origins Federation Conference 2026 in Switzerland.
The winning project, Microbe‑Carrying Ejecta Digital Twin: A Simulator of Interstellar Lithopanspermia, is a digital twin designed to simulate the interstellar transfer of biological material.
“Most research on the origins of life focuses on its local emergence. We decided to approach the topic from a different angle and examine how biological material could be redistributed between planetary systems through natural astrophysical processes. Our project is based on the lithopanspermia hypothesis, exploring the likelihood of microorganisms surviving inside rock fragments that, after meteorite impacts, are ejected onto interstellar trajectories,” explains Maksymilian Paczyński from the Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science at WUT.
The simulator created by the students integrates two key aspects: physical transport – a simplified model of ballistic trajectories based on the N‑body problem, covering both the source and target systems – and biological survivability, represented by an abstract survival function that decreases with travel time and exposure to cosmic radiation.
“The application generates detailed probability maps and three‑dimensional visualisations of 3D debris swarms, highlighting rare but physically possible pathways for biological transfer. As a result, we created an environment that enables rapid testing of astrobiology research hypotheses,” adds our student.
Excerpt from our students’ competition presentation
Our students and their team won the main prize – a trip to the Origins Federation Conference 2026 in Switzerland, organised at ETH. During the conference, they will have the opportunity to present their work and results to the international research community.
The event brought together several hundred participants from around the world, and the mentors and organisers included specialists from leading global research centres, among them experts closely collaborating with NASA GeneLab.