Catholic University students win AI build contest with real-world apps

Two Catholic University students each won $5,000 in the Busch School of Business’s first AI Vibe Coding Contest after building working AI applications for surgical quality control and gym membership management. The competition is set to return in the fall and move into select leadership courses as the school expands AI-focused, hands-on training.

Why it matters: - The contest shows how business schools are testing AI skills through real products, not just pitch decks. - The Busch School is using the competition to teach students how to build, deploy and explain AI-powered tools in a setting closer to the workplace. - The school plans to repeat the contest in the fall and fold it into select leadership courses.

What happened: - Students at The Catholic University of America competed for a $5,000 prize in the Busch School of Business’s inaugural AI Vibe Coding Contest, titled “How Crazy Can You Get?” - Daniel Vincent, a senior from Pflugerville, Texas, tied for first place with “Cosmas,” an AI tool for surgical quality control. - Carter Virsik, a junior from Huntersville, N.C., tied for first place with “Pulse,” a platform for tracking fitness club individual memberships. - Each winner received a cash prize, and the Eisens also gave each winner and their parents a trip to Miami, Fla.

The details: - Cosmas is a defect detection and analytics tool aimed at helping medical device manufacturers prevent product recalls. - Pulse tracks member activity, attendance and membership status for gyms and fitness clubs. - Participants learned vibe coding in 30 days with guidance from judges that included Jack Yoest, associate professor of practice, business executives and alumni. - Students had to identify a real-world problem or opportunity, build a working app with AI features, deploy it on cloud infrastructure and keep a transparent development history on GitHub. - Projects were judged on functionality, AI integration, code quality, user experience and business impact. - David and Courtney Eisen, executives of Florida-based LuxRally Travel, provided the prizes and served as competition judges. - David Eisen is a 2013 Catholic University alumnus. - Other judges included Matt Retterer, a software engineer with Numinar, and Catholic University MBA alumni Jack Wright and Adelaide Mae Machado Ulm.

Between the lines: - The contest rewarded execution over presentation, with judges emphasizing that students had to ship a working product. - David Eisen said the competition was built as a “build contest,” not a business-plan contest, and that Daniel Vincent and Carter Virsik “shipped” their ideas. - Courtney Eisen said the students worked the way the real world works, using AI tools, servers, version control and real users. - Andrew Abela, dean of the Busch School, said the contest reflects the school’s view that principled leadership must be paired with practical competence.

What's next: - The Busch School will repeat the competition in the fall. - The school will also incorporate the model into select leadership courses. - The inaugural event serves as a test case for teaching students to manage AI-assisted development from idea to deployment.

The bottom line: - Catholic University is turning AI education into a hands-on build challenge, and the first winners proved students can create usable tools under real-world constraints.