Two MSc Artificial Intelligence students at Roehampton, Rostam Sodagari and Daud Ibrahim, were part of the winning team at the Agentic Evolution Hackathon held in London on 2 May 2026.
Organised by MongoDB and Cerebral Valley, the event brought together more than 70 teams and over 200 participants in a highly competitive environment focused on the future of AI systems.
Their team progressed to the Top 6 finalists, received the highest number of community votes, and was ultimately awarded first place by the judging panel.
The team developed PlanPass AI, an intelligent planning and compliance platform designed to help homeowners and builders navigate complex planning regulations before committing to expensive design and construction costs.
Users enter information about their property and project plans, while the system analyses local council regulations, evaluates compliance, and generates interactive home designs. The platform combines planning intelligence with design workflows, helping users visualise and refine projects while reducing the risk of costly planning rejections.
According to Rostam, the team wanted to solve a very real problem affecting homeowners across the UK.
“Builders and homeowners lose around £900 million a year due to planning application rejections caused by rules buried in lengthy council policy documents.”
Rather than creating a simple proof-of-concept, the team focused on building something with real-world application.
“We were not building a demo for the sake of it. We focused on a production-oriented system that could genuinely be used by real homeowners and builders today,” Rostam explained.
Daud added that one of the goals was to create a system that reduced friction between planning, design and compliance while still keeping people involved in decision-making.
“We wanted to create an intelligent system that could reduce friction between design, compliance and planning while still keeping humans involved in the process.”
Competing at the event was an experience that both students described as intense but highly rewarding.
“It felt more like a real engineering and startup environment than a traditional student hackathon,” Daud said.
Rostam added:
“Being in a room with founders, investors and engineers from across the AI industry pushed us to think and build like a real startup rather than students at a hackathon.”
When the winners were announced, both admitted they were surprised.
“Honestly, we were shocked,” Rostam said. “It felt like real validation that the problem we chose and the way we built the solution genuinely resonated.”
For both students, the experience reinforced how classroom learning and industry experience can work together.
Rostam believes opportunities such as hackathons are essential:
“The skills you build in the classroom only fully click when you put them under real pressure.”
Daud echoed the importance of practical experience and encouraged students to focus on solving real problems rather than simply creating showcase projects.
Inspired by Rostam and Daud’s success? Learn more about the opportunities available through Roehampton’s School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment and explore Computing at Roehampton.