Student teams including Indian American students won the top honors in the 2026 Nittany AI Challenge, an annual competition that gives students the opportunity to develop AI and machine learning solutions to a wide range of problems.
Team CrashAI, including two Indian American students Rohiin Havre and Ameya Panchal, along with Andy Tang won first place and $5,500 in the Nittany AI Challenge, an annual competition that gives Penn State students the opportunity to develop AI and machine learning solutions to a wide range of problems. The team was also awarded the $3,500 Cocoziello Award and the $3,500 Office of Physical Plant Award.
CrashAI addresses the difficulty of manually analyzing large volumes of complex car crash data collected by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
A panel of industry experts and Penn State faculty selected five student teams as winners last month.
READ: Indian American student Jaya Basu wins $86k Sophie Kerr Prize (May 19, 2026)
Second place $3,500 prize went to SignLink, which addresses the lack of a major platform that offers automatic sign language translation for video conferencing.
Third place prize of $2,500 went to MatchMyLab, which addresses the recurring and costly challenges involved with teaching assistant scheduling in higher education settings. Team members included Gustavo Rodrigues Foz, Troy Matthew LaPolice and Julien Victor Mutton.
Fourth place with a $2,000 prize went to Surge, which addresses difficulties with discovering, curating and updating events for community event calendars that inform residents and visitors. Team members included Ishaan Narang and Lance Streuber.
Fifth place with a $2,000 prize went to ClaimShield, which addresses errors in the nation’s health care billing system that leave patients vulnerable to overpayment. Team members included Kapil Ravi Rathod, Aneesh Shamraj and Kushal Joseph Vallamkatt.
READ: Indian American students build health insurance decision tool (January 12, 2026)
The event also featured additional monetary awards. Jonathan Dambrot, CEO at Cranium AI, presented the Jonathan and Alana Dambrot AI Excellence Awards. Five students each received $1,000 for achievements in and contributions to the Nittany AI Alliance: Saatvik Pradhan, Anthony Shpilsky, Ishita Sinha, Sri Grourav Aravind Turaga and Raul van Hoorde.
The challenge kicked off with the “Preparation and Customer Discovery Phase” in September 2025. In January, 40 student teams competed in the “Prototype Phase” of the competition, and 15 teams each received $300 and advanced to the “Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Phase.”
Housed in the College of IST, the Nittany AI Alliance creates programs that bring together students, faculty, staff and industry leaders to address real-world problems through experiential learning projects using artificial intelligence-based solutions.