SDS Students Secure Malaysia Runner-Up at RMIT Hackathon 2026

A team of students from Sunway Diploma Studies' Diploma in Information Technology (DIIT) programme emerged as the Malaysia Runner-Up at the RMIT Hackathon 2026, held on 22 and 23 October 2026.

Organised by RMIT, the hackathon brought together students from Malaysia, Vietnam and Australia to tackle technical challenges and develop innovative solutions. Over the past two seasons, the competition has engaged more than 700 university students, providing participants with opportunities to apply their coding, troubleshooting, teamwork and problem-solving skills to real-world scenarios.

This year's edition introduced a multidisciplinary challenge that combined Cybersecurity, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Low-Resource Languages. Participants were required to explore innovative AI applications while addressing security considerations and the complexities associated with languages that have limited digital resources.

Throughout the competition, teams faced two major technical challenges. The first required participants to evaluate, select and independently train a specialised AI model. The second challenged teams to develop a secure and functional web application integrating their trained model to address a real-world problem.

Representing Sunway Diploma Studies (SDS), Team SLaGOON demonstrated strong technical competency, teamwork and resilience in successfully completing both challenges. Their efforts earned them the second-highest overall score among participating Malaysian teams, securing the Malaysia Runner-Up title.

The team comprised four students from the Diploma in Information Technology programme:

• Danny Lim You Chen
• Yio Ly Ern
• Barry Yong Kai Yuan
• Lim Wai Kang

The achievement reflects the students' ability to apply their technical knowledge in a competitive international environment while collaborating to develop practical solutions to complex challenges.

SDS congratulates Team SLaGOON on their outstanding achievement and looks forward to seeing them continue to grow and excel in future competitions and industry opportunities.