A team of students, including an Indian-American student, took 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, which includes two Indian-American students, Rohin Harble and Ameya Panchal, and Andy Tan, won $5,500 for winning 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 also received a $3,500 Cocoziello Award and a $3,500 Office of Physical Plant Award.
CrashAI addresses the challenge of manually analyzing the large amounts of complex car accident data collected by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
A committee of industry experts and Penn State faculty selected five student teams as winners last month.
Read: Indian-American student Jaya Basu wins $86,000 Sophie Kerr Award (May 19, 2026)
The second place prize of $3,500 went to SignLink, which addresses the lack of a leading platform providing automated sign language translation for video conferencing.
The third place prize of $2,500 went to MatchMyLab. The company addresses the recurring and costly challenges associated with scheduling teaching assistants in higher education settings. Team members included Gustavo Rodríguez Foss, Troy Matthew Lapolis, and Julian Victor Maton.
Fourth place with a $2,000 prize went to Surge, which addresses the challenges of discovering, managing, and updating events on community event calendars that provide information to residents and visitors. Team members included Ishaan Narang and Lance Stroiber.
Fifth place with a $2,000 prize went to ClaimShield, which addresses errors in the nation’s medical billing system that leave patients vulnerable to overpayments. The team members included Kapil Ravi Rathod, Aneesh Shamraj and Kushal Joseph Vallamkat.
Read: Indian American students build health insurance decision tool (January 12, 2026)
Additional prizes were also offered at this event. Jonathan Dambrot, CEO of Cranium AI, presented the Jonathan Dambrot and Alana Dambrot AI Excellence Awards. Five students received $1,000 each for their work and contributions to the Nittany AI Alliance: Saatvik Pradhan, Anthony Shpilsky, Ishita Sinha, Sri Grourav Aravind Turaga, and Raul van Hoorde.
The challenge began in September 2025 with a “preparation and customer discovery phase.” In January, 40 student teams competed in the “prototype phase” of the competition, and 15 teams won $300 each to advance to the “minimum viable product (MVP) phase.”
The Nittany AI Alliance, based at IST University, brings together students, faculty, staff, and industry leaders to create programs that address real-world problems through experiential learning projects using artificial intelligence-based solutions.
