Student teams win awards for their AI problem-solving ideas

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A panel of industry experts and Penn State faculty selected five student teams to share a prize pool of $15,500 in the final phase of the 2025 Nittany AI Challenge. The winning teams will use their prize money to continue developing projects that use artificial intelligence (AI) for good to solve pressing global issues.  

The selection of winners, held April 14 at Robb Hall in the Hintz Family Alumni Center, was the culmination of an annual competition that provides students with the opportunity to build AI and machine learning solutions for a wide range of pressing global issues. 

Last December, teams competed in the prototype design and presentation phase. Fifteen teams were selected to receive $300 to develop their idea into a minimal viable product (MVP) that they would pitch to judges in the final phase of the challenge. Several teams that did not receive a cash award opted to continue working on their project.  

“The MVP phase of the Nittany AI Challenge is both a pitch contest and a celebration of innovation, creativity and the potential of AI to address pressing social issues,” said Daren Coudriet, executive director of the Nittany AI Alliance. “This final phase highlights the knowledge, skills and hard work of the participants as they showcase their ability to create impactful AI solutions.” 

The winners of the 2025 Nittany AI Challenge 

• First place $5,500: PooPal, which provides an automated, privacy-focused solution for stool monitoring and analysis; team members were Jaren Daniel and Alysse Deterville. 
• Second place $3,500: SlideSmart, a software tool that allows users to upload PowerPoint presentations and PDFs to automatically generate study guides; team members included Jace Anderson, Brayden Pettigrew and Will Wunsch. 
• Third place $2,500: Prognosis, a platform designed to predict dengue outbreaks using satellite imagery, weather data and cloud patterns; team members were Imisha Juneja, Aryan Mehta, Suhani Nimje and Abhimanyu Sareen. 
• Fourth place $2,000: EDUAI, a hyper-personalized interactive educative assistant designed to optimize how students learn, connect and achieve their goals; team members included Divyam Arora, Stephanie Bowles, Keshav Khandelwal, Julia Lenge and Mantavya Mahajan. 

• Fifth place $2,000: Academic Compass, which aims to support undecided undergraduate students in discovering potential majors; team members included Xiaozheng Dai and Zimeng Shao. 

Guest speaker Shane Shaneman, senior AI strategist at NVIDIA, presented, “Embracing the Accelerating Pace of Innovation in AI.”  

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:  

• Jared Daniel 
• Minseo Kim 
• Javier Pozo Miranda 
• Vishnu Venugopal 
• Zachary Walnock 

The Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) sponsored the event. PIT-UN is a project of the New Venture Fund (NVF), a 501(c)(3) public charity that supports innovative and effective public interest projects. Three student teams each received a $3,750 PIT-UN grant, which provides internship funding to promote continuing work on their projects.  

• PooPal 
• Prognosis 
• SIGNUM, which aims to empower caregivers with personalized insight and intelligent monitoring; team members were Gustavo Foz, Julian Mutton and Younsoo Park 

Invent Penn State also sponsored the challenge and presented a $3,000 Invent Penn State Entrepreneurship Award. 

• SlideSmart 

Winning teams included students from the College of Education, the College of Engineering, the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), and the College of the Liberal Arts and are from Penn State University Park, Penn State Behrend and Penn State World Campus.

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. The alliance is committed to providing students with unique out-of-classroom learning opportunities, improving the student experience at Penn State, and facilitating innovative collaboration between businesses and top talent at the University and across the commonwealth.