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Indian-origin students win Penn State AI challenge
The students were part of teams that developed AI tools ranging from crash-data analysis systems to community event discovery platforms.
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Malvika Choudhary - Fri, 08, May 2026
- 18:29 EDT
- 39
Team CrashAI won first place and $5,500 in the Nittany AI Challenge. The team was also awarded the $3,500 Cocoziello Award and the $3,500 Office of Physical Plant Award. / Credit: Cole Handerhan / Penn State. Creative Commons
Several Indian-origin students at Penn State University were recognized at the 2026 Nittany AI Challenge after their teams developed award-winning artificial intelligence projects focused on public and community issues.
Rohiin Havre and Ameya Panchal were part of CrashAI, the team that won first place and a $5,500 prize. The project was developed to address the difficulty of manually analyzing large volumes of crash data collected by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Also Read: Penn State honors Om Dobariya with inclusivity award
University Press reported that Havre is involved with the Machine Learning Boot Camp Leadership Academy at Penn State, serves as secretary of the university’s Information Sciences and Technology Living Learning Community, and works as a research assistant at the university.
Panchal works as a part-time application specialist with the Penn State Nittany AI Alliance and also conducts undergraduate research in AI and computational modeling. His work includes Monte Carlo simulations and machine learning-based statistical forecasting.
Ishaan Narang, was part of the fourth-place team Surge, which received a $2,000 prize. The project focuses on improving the discovery, curation and updating of community event calendars for residents and visitors.
Narang is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Penn State and serves as technology lead at Machine Learning at PSU. Before moving to the United States, he studied computer science at Delhi Public School Chandigarh in India.
In addition to the competition winners, Saatvik Pradhan and Ishita Sinha received the Jonathan and Alana Dambrot AI Excellence Awards, presented by Jonathan Dambrot, chief executive officer of Cranium AI. The awards recognized contributions to the Nittany AI Alliance and included a $1,000 prize for each recipient.
The Nittany AI Challenge began in September 2025 and included multiple stages focused on AI and machine learning innovation. Forty student teams competed in the prototype phase, with 10 teams advancing to the final pitch round before 28 judges.
The annual competition concluded on April 16 at Robb Hall in the Hintz Family Alumni Center, where student teams pitched AI-based solutions before a panel of industry experts and Penn State faculty.
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