Industry-Led AI Hackathon at the University of the South Pacific — Honeywell, TCS and Pacific Technologies Scout Fijian AI Talent

From 16 to 19 December 2025, the University of the South Pacific's (USP) Laucala Campus in Suva hosted a four-day, industry-led AI hackathon organised with Honeywell Aerospace, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Pacific Technologies, with support from Data Consultancy Services (DCS). It was open to high-school students, university students, recent graduates and IT professionals.
Participants worked in teams — including six-member team 'Rawrr', comprising USP students Toni Nam, Shreshtha Sharma, George Fong, Akash Mishra, Ravinesh Narayan and Gwen Mar — through structured sessions on teamwork methodology, AI solution design, testing and deployment, before pitching finished solutions to industry judges. Honeywell framed the event around real aerospace use cases such as predictive maintenance and flight-safety AI, while explicitly describing it as a way to explore Fiji's AI talent pool for future partnerships.
The event sits within Fiji's 2024 national AI Hub and its National Digital Strategy 2025-2030, both cited by organisers as reasons Fiji was chosen. Coverage from Islands Business, Fiji Sun and FBC News each confirm the dates, named partners and named participants/quotes, but none report a total participant count, a competition winner, or any pre/post skills measurement — so the evidence here is descriptive rather than outcome-based.

Read the full analysis: https://islandsbusiness.com/partner-news/participants-build-real-world-ai-solutions-at-industry-led-hackathon-at-usp/