Interdisciplinary collaboration between students from the Faculty of Science and Mathematics (FSM) and the Faculty of Medicine (FK) at Universitas Diponegoro has once again achieved outstanding international recognition. Five Undip students, consisting of three undergraduate Informatics students from FSM Undip and two undergraduate Nursing students from FK Undip, successfully won First Place at the Harvard Health Systems Innovation Lab (HSIL) Hackathon 2026 – Bandung Hub.
The competition, held on April 10-11, 2026, by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Institut Teknologi Bandung, carried the theme “Building High-Value Health Systems: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence”. It was attended by hundreds of participants from various backgrounds, ranging from students to international academics.
In an interview featured in FSM Inspires Episode 2, three Informatics students involved in this collaboration—Haidar Ali Laudza (Project Leader & AI Engineer), Julius Tegar Aji Putra (AI Engineer), and Muhammad Fikri (Back-end Developer)—shared the story behind their achievement.
Muhammad Fikri explained that the competition focused on developing artificial intelligence-based solutions to address global health challenges. “This competition integrates AI into healthcare systems, focusing on generating innovative ideas to solve health-related problems worldwide,” he said.
Winning 1st place came as an unexpected yet rewarding experience for them. Fikri described the achievement as both exciting and challenging. “It was quite surprising for us, as this was our first time advancing to an international-scale competition. We hope to perform even better at the global stage,” he added.
Meanwhile, Haidar Ali Laudza shared that their journey was far from ordinary. He revealed that the team registered for the competition just about an hour before the deadline. From there, they conducted a rapid brainstorming session and came up with an idea related to snakebite management, which was later developed further with input from experts in the field.
“We reached out to medical experts and elaborated on our idea using all the resources we had. From there, we advanced to the finals, made it into the Top 8, and eventually secured 1st place,” Haidar explained.
The process was not without challenges. Julius Tegar Aji Putra highlighted that the biggest challenge was ensuring that their idea was truly relevant to real-world needs. To overcome this, they validated their concept directly with experts and established a structured workflow within the team.
“With diverse backgrounds, we aligned our respective roles so that we wouldn’t work in silos. That’s where collaboration became the key,” Julius noted.
He also emphasized that the supportive academic environment at FSM Undip played a significant role in their success. According to him, guidance from lecturers and the facilities provided helped refine their idea throughout the competition. “The environment at FSM is very supportive. The lecturers guided us thoroughly, and even funding support was very helpful,” he added.
As a closing remark, Haidar encouraged fellow students who are interested in participating in similar competitions to take the first step. “The most important thing is to register first. By taking the opportunity, we can do our best with what we have,” he said. He also reminded students not to hesitate in trying and to keep striving for achievements.
Following this accomplishment, the team will continue their journey as Indonesia’s representative at the global level, competing against participants from various countries. This achievement highlights how interdisciplinary collaboration between technology and healthcare can generate impactful innovations on an international scale.