Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,
You’re invited to the Finals Gala of the fourth annual Grainger Computing Innovation Prize hosted by the College of Computing on Thursday, November 7. This exciting event is open to all!
The Finals Gala showcases the best of Illinois Tech as Grainger Prize finalist teams of undergraduate and graduate students make project presentations to a jury of Chicago’s tech leaders. Don’t miss the chance to cast your vote to determine the winner of the Audience Choice Award!
Support the finalists and share in the excitement as we crown our 2024 Grainger Computing Innovation Prize champions!
Thursday, November 7, from 2:30–6 p.m. in The McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC) Auditorium and Ballroom
- Finalist presentations: 2:30–4:20 p.m.
- Reception and poster session: 4:30–5 p.m.
- Awards ceremony: 5–6 p.m.
Join us to support the finalists! Watch their prototype pitches presented to a panel of esteemed judges from 2:30–4:20 p.m., cast your vote for the Audience Award, and then enjoy mingling and the awards presentation starting at 4:30 p.m. in The McCormick Tribune Campus Center Ballroom. Appetizers and soft drinks will be provided.
Learn more about the five exciting projects that progressed to the finals:
- AidTech Innovators—A Generative AI platform designed to enhance disaster relief through real-time data and seamless NGO coordination, leveraging Agentic AI to ensure efficient resource deployment without redundancy. This platform integrates live data on affected regions, demographics, and NGO operations, all visualized through a collaborative dashboard. By detecting and minimizing overlapping aid efforts, it enables NGOs to coordinate effectively, optimizing resource allocation for maximum impact. The platform’s intelligent distribution planning fosters a unified, data-driven response, transforming disaster relief efforts into a streamlined, cooperative approach.
- SmartTraffic AI—SmartTraffic AI harnesses cutting-edge machine learning to set dynamic speed limits based on real-time and historical data on traffic, weather, and accident patterns. By continually adjusting speed limits to match current conditions, SmartTraffic AI reduces congestion and proactively lowers accident risk, creating safer and smoother roadways. Through advanced machine learning, SmartTraffic AI delivers a smarter, adaptive approach to traffic management that benefits drivers and communities alike.
- RiskWatch—RiskWatch introduces a scalable fall detection solution by using machine learning on data collected from an accelerometer, gyroscope, and heart rate sensor. This data is processed in real-time on a small, wristwatch-style device that is non-invasive and easy for seniors to wear. The device also features a mobile application that instantly notifies connected family members or caregivers when a fall is detected, ensuring rapid response. Beyond detection, RiskWatch analyzes stored fall data to identify patterns, possibly revealing hidden risks like abnormal heart rates allowing healthcare providers to determine the cause of the fall and prevent future falls.
- Tree of Life—The Tree of Life leverages AI technology to target the often-overlooked potential of soil carbon sequestration. Unlike most technologies that focus on atmospheric solutions, this product combines real-time environmental data from soil sensors, GPS, and satellite imagery to recommend the best trees to plant for carbon capture. By analyzing local soil health and biodiversity, the device provides hyper-localized, adaptive recommendations for maximizing environmental impact. It bridges the gap between data analytics and practical ecology, offering a scalable solution that can be customized for diverse environments worldwide, from factories to urban forests and rural landscapes.
- VigilAI—A Multimodal Large Language Model (Phi 3 Vision) to analyze incoming frames from surveillance footage and generate detailed descriptions through right prompt engineering. We then create vector embedding of those descriptions and save in vector-database, to do resemblance matching in a backtracking (novel idea) fashion later on, to identify relevant frames from the past for right context. Relevancy based frame matching reduces the compute cost significantly. We notify and provide the context driven description of the situation to the end user after analyzing the severity level.
About the Grainger Computing Innovation Prize
The Grainger Computing Innovation Prize calls on Illinois Tech students to develop creative technology solutions to some of the most challenging problems facing the world today: education, health, energy, public safety, transportation, economic development, sustainable smart infrastructure, climate change, and more.
Finalists who tackle these challenging problems best win a share of $30,000 in prizes:
- First-place team: $15,000
- Second-place team: $10,000
- Third-place team: $5,000
The Grainger Computing Innovation Prize was established through a generous endowed gift from The Grainger Foundation, an independent, private foundation based in Lake Forest, Illinois, that provides substantive support to a broad range of If you have any questions about the Grainger Computing Innovation Prize competition, please contact graingerprize@iit.edu.
Sincerely,
Lance Fortnow
Dean, College of Computing