Datathon 2026: Using ML to Tackle Wildfires

On Saturday, May 9th, the Google Huddle Experience was filled with energy, collaboration, and innovation as students gathered for Datathon 2026, hosted by CP Mentorship in partnership with Women in Data Science. From 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, more than 30 middle school and high school students came together to explore how machine learning and data science can be used to solve real world problems.

A Challenge with Real World Impact

The day began with guest speakers, including firefighters from the Mountain View Fire Department, who shared their experiences responding to wildfires, and Tee, who spoke about community preparedness through CERT. Students also participated in workshops teaching machine learning basics before diving into the datathon.

This year’s challenge focused on wildfire prediction, where students built machine learning models to predict wildfire spread across 12, 24, 48, and 72 hour time windows. Teams explored feature engineering, model tuning, and different approaches to improve prediction performance while applying data science to an important real-world problem.

A Huge Thank You

This event would not have been possible without our incredible volunteers, presenters, judges, and guest speakers. A special thank you to the Mountain View Fire Department for sharing real-world experiences in wildfire response, Tee for speaking about CERT and community preparedness, and our judges from the WiDS community for supporting and encouraging students throughout the event. Thank you for helping create an environment where students could learn, explore new ideas, and apply technology to meaningful real-world challenges!

Stay tuned for future events!