The seventh annual cloudathon@UH, a cloud computing and network design event for college and university students, featured record attendance in the first year it was held at the University of Houston’s Sugar Land campus.
Event organizer and instructional associate professor of computer information systems José C. Martínez called it “the best cloudathon@UH competition ever,” and the statistics seem to agree.
This year, 180 student participants across 17 majors gathered from seven different universities to compete for $14,000 in prizes and show off their AWS-based skills to dozens of industry professional judges and advisors. This year also marked the first time that cloudathon@UH was held at UH Sugar Land.
cloudathon@UH continues to serve as the model for similar premier, cloud-based computing competition events at other universities across the continent, including both the U.S. and Mexico.
“This was our seventh year, and we continue to improve every year,” Martínez said. “The cloudathon@UH competition is following its vision of becoming the best collegiate, cloud-based competition in the country. We met that mark [this year].”
This year’s addition of a dedicated cybersecurity problem to the competition slate was “an absolute success,” he added. Further incorporating AI-based topics in 2026 will “position [UH] to establish ourselves in a way that will be recognized nationwide by the academic community and the industry” in addition to providing optimal educational and performance opportunities to participating students.
“AWS [Amazon Web Services] is fully engaged in this with their resources, spreading the word. I have a plan, and I believe we can get there. Most important, for me, is that we are adding value for our students,” Martínez said.
While some of that value comes in the form of intangible experience and skill development, the impact of financial support and sponsorship from valuable industry players cannot be overstated.
This year’s sponsors included AWS’ Engineering Support Team out of Dallas, ConocoPhillips, SIM Houston, Confluent and Amazon Web Services’ Senior Enterprise Account Manager-Higher Ed Team for the Texas Region. Confluent was also responsible for hosting this year’s AWS GameDay portion of the event.
Together, these sponsors provided more than $10,600 in support for cloudathon@UH 2025, whose organizers are committed to fostering mutually beneficial partnerships with participating sponsors to provide unique value and ROI for all involved — a further point of distinction between this event and others.
Though cloudathon@UH 2025 wrapped up just two weeks ago, the ball is already back in motion — cloudathon@UH 2026 is scheduled for Saturday, April 11, 2026. Students who are interested in showcasing their architecture, configuration and operations cloud-based skills, as well as industry leaders and professionals who are interested in offering financial or advising support for next year’s competition, can visit cloudathon@UH landing page for more information and ways to get involved.