Two UW Tacoma finance students won $15,000 for building an app that flags phone scams as they happen.
Colin Sica and Noah Soepardi created Scout, the winning project at the second annual HuskyHack fintech competition, SouthSoundBiz.com reported. The scam-detection service monitors phone conversations for common fraud tactics. When it spots something suspicious, it alerts the user and offers options to end the call or connect directly with Sound Credit Union.
The pair built and tested Scout in less than 24 hours.
What the team won
Beyond the cash prize, Sica and Soepardi received a six-month membership to CoMotion Labs in Seattle to continue developing the concept. CoMotion Labs is a University of Washington startup incubator that provides office space, mentoring and networking for early-stage companies.
The team said in a press release that seeing Scout work live in front of judges showed that a strong idea, paired with a willingness to learn and adapt, can compete with anyone, according to SouthSoundBiz.
How HuskyHack works
Sound Credit Union and UW Tacoma's Milgard Center for Business Analytics co-host the 24-hour competition. It challenges more than 100 students to develop financial technology that protects users from fraud.
The event's website describes a two-phase structure. In Phase One, teams build a prototype and submit it for judging. The top three submissions each receive $1,000. In Phase Two, teams refine their projects and present them for final evaluation. Judges score entries on technical execution, functionality, user experience, scalability and presentation quality.
College students from across Washington state are eligible to compete.
Second year for the competition
The first HuskyHack took place Nov. 8-9, 2025, on the UW Tacoma campus. More than 141 students registered for that inaugural event, according to a Sound Credit Union blog post. Riddhi Bajaj won the 2025 competition as a solo entrant with CardGenie, an app that helps users manage credit cards and rewards.
Sica and Soepardi will use their CoMotion Labs membership to access prototyping equipment, workshops and connections across UW's research community as they continue developing Scout.
