The top three finalists in the Nayar Prize, a $1 million award to develop breakthrough projects that produce meaningful results with a societal impact, will present their winning project proposals to the Illinois Tech community from 1-2 p.m. in the Tech Park Atrium on Wednesday, November 4, 2015.
The three finalists include:
- ADEPT Cancer Imager. Invented by Kenneth Tichauer. Team members Tichauer (biomedical engineering), Jovan Brankov (electrical and computer engineering), and Rajendra Mehta (biology) are considered leaders in imaging and drug development.
- Game Development for Early Language Acquisition in High-Risk Children. Team members Carly Kocurek (digital humanities), Jennifer Miller (psychology), Cynthia Hood (computer science), and Matt Bauer (linguistics) are experienced leaders in game development, assessment, and language learning.
- Driverless City Project. The team of Marshall Brown (architecture), Lili Du (transportation engineering), Laura Forlano (design), Jack Guthman (architecture), and Ron Henderson (landscape architecture) includes thought leaders in urban design, transportation engineering, smart cities, and planning law.
The finalists will each be granted $100,000 to spend within a year to show significant progress toward a solution for the problem they are investigating. In year two, the team that shows the most promise will receive an additional $200,000 to continue its work over the next two years. Finally, if that team continues to meet the metrics and benchmarks established by the steering committee, it will be awarded $500,000.
The Nayar Prize is funded by distinguished Illinois Tech alumnus Madhavan Nayar (M.S. IE ’68) and the Nayar Family Foundation. Nayar is the founder of a company that is a pioneer in information integrity software.