As one of the featured events of AI Week at MSOE, the 2026 Rosie Supercomputer Super Challenge saw record-breaking submissions and awe-inspiring projects. The annual challenge asks students to solve a problem using Rosie, MSOE’s NVIDIA GPU-powered supercomputer and number crunching behemoth.

“The presentations this year were off the charts,” said Dwight Diercks ’90, H’14, MSOE Regent, NVIDIA senior VP of software engineering. “It’s thrilling how each year the students outpace the competition.”

Diercks served as a judge alongside Nick Haemel ’02, MSOE Regent and NVIDIA vice president of medical imaging and system software; Dr. Jeremy Kedziora, PieperPower Endowed Chair of AI; and Dr. Derek Riley, MSOE professor.

Adam Haile was inspired to create his project after attending the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium in 2023 and has been perfecting it ever since. His project uses game-playing reinforcement learning models to demonstrate how an AI agent can be trained to play the game SkyJo and predict who will win.

The judges were impressed by Haile’s technical prowess, awarding him first place and the $10,000 grand prize. And the judges weren’t the only ones who were impressed. His project caught the eye of an NVIDIA hiring manager. After graduating in May 2026, Haile began his career as an AI agent engineer at NVIDIA. “I never would have imagined that one project could kick-start something this big,” said Haile.

Two of this year’s finalist teams were inspired to solve a social problem affecting their communities, both near and far.

Alhagie Boye teamed up with Wilfried Tapsoba and Muhammad Alliyu to create a system that optimizes where healthcare facilities should be placed in Africa. The project has a special place in each team member’s heart as it connects them back to their home countries in Africa.

Growing up in The Gambia, Boye saw firsthand how difficult it was for people to access basic healthcare. “My mom worked as a midwife. There were times when women would come to our home in labor because it was the closest help available,” explained Boye. “Knowing that this kind of system could help inform better decisions and improve access to care for millions of people makes the work feel purposeful beyond just a technical project.”

Closer to campus, Josh Myers, Xander Ede, Eddy Chukwuma and Dylan Norquist created a project focused on proactive urban forestry management. They explored how satellite data can be combined with forestry data from the City of Milwaukee to help re-prioritize how the Forestry Department manages thousands of trees across the city to prevent damages that may arise from structural deficits and falling trees.

“This was our first time working on a project with actual stakeholders,” said Chukwuma. “This increased our confidence and reinforced the fact that we’re solving real issues and having a real impact.”

The team earned third place and continues to work with city officials to expand their project.

This year marked the fifth anniversary of the competition, and it was the largest to date with 27 entries, nearly doubling the number of entries received last year.