HACKATHON LEGAL DESIGN, LLM, XAI, AI RIGHTS - DEADLINE: 28 February 2026 first selection - 30 May 2026 deadline - July Award

WINNERS

FIRST AWARD: CLARITY86 – Elena Della Valentina, Marta Zoppello, Edoardo Cecchinato, a tool to help citizens understand and exercise their right to receive clear and meaningful explanations under Article 86 of the EU AI Act. 

SECOND AWARD: AI Act Prohibitions Checker –Imane Hmiddou, Alessandro Aygun Suleyman, Azam  Bakhshandeh, a solution to make prohibited AI practices under Article 5 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689  easier to understand and apply. 

THIRD AWARD: LEXAI –Simone Vagnoni, John Frederic Brüne, Célestine Juliette Marie Lecat, Generoso  Longo, Ludovico Papalia, a Chrome extension to help users identify AI compliance issues, visualise risk levels and access the relevant legal provisions. 

GOAL: The goal is to create a non-textual representation of the AI Act[1] rights, with particular regard to implement the transparency and explicability (XAI) principle, using LLMs, Hybrid AI (including symbolic AI), Knowledge Graphs, integrated with the FRIA (Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment) approach.

Privacy, IRP, Discrimination and Bias issues should be taken into consideration in the solution by-design.

The target of the outcome could be:

1. Citizen
2. Lawyers
3. Judge
4. Company
5. Institutions

WHO CAN PARTICIPATE: This hackathon is addressed to students and PhD candidates from all Universities.

STEPS:

Zero#publication of the regulation: 

First# pre-selection: 28 February 2026 the pitch and the main idea.

Second# webinar: March 2026.

Third# project delivery: 30 May 2026.

Four# Award in presence: July 2026.

DATASET: AkomaNtoso datasets, other datasets

OUTPUT of HACKATHON: We require the following results:

1. Description of the scenario
2. User persona description
3. Legal hypothesis and legal concept analysis
4. Visual representation and evaluation
5. Example of application and legal interpretation
6. Connection with the Digital Rights
7. Attention to the digital divide and multilingualism.

AWARD

• First Prize: €1,800 gross scholarship 
• Second Prize: €1,200 gross scholarship
• Third Prize: €700 gross scholarship

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj

CRITERIA FOR THE PRELIMINARY SELECTION OF THE 10 GROUPS:

1. Creativity and Innovation of the idea - 4 points
2. Completeness of the team competencies - 4 points
3. Interdisciplinarity and Methodology - 4 points
4. Feasibility - 4 points
5. Availability to be in the presence in Bologna  - 4 points

Total 20

CRITERIA FOR THE HACKATHON:

1. Creativity and Innovation of the idea - 4 points
2. Interdisciplinarity and Methodology - 4 points
3. Legal analysis - 4 points
4. Ethics analysis - 4 points
5. User persona analysis - 4 points
6. Original Design product - 4 points
7. Dataset explanation - 4 points
8. XAI solution using LLM/KG - 4 points
9. Evaluation and interpretation output - 4 points
10. Technical robustness - 4 points

Total 40

JURY:

Monica Palmirani, Salvatore Sapienza, Michele Corazza, University of Bologna, ALMA-AI

Fabio Vitali, DISI, University of Bologna

Gustavo Marfia, DAR, University of Bologna

Corrado Roversi, DSG, University of Bologna

Arianna Rossi, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

Subscribe here for participating to the selection of the hackathon with deadline 28 February 2026.

https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/nUW48g4Enx

Contact: lexai@unibo.it

 Call for Applications: https://bandi.unibo.it/s/dsg/bando-per-il-conferimento-di-n-3-premio-di-studio-o-nell-ambito-dell-hackathon-a-supporto-del-progetto-di-ricerca-legal-design-and-data-science-for-explicable-ai-in-legal-domain-referente-prof-ssa-monica-palmirani