Purdue University students led the Adamant Aerospace, AeroInspect, Electrocean Inc. and PlugNPlay teams during the spring 2026 Moonshot Pitch Challenge program, organized by Purdue Innovates Incubator. The teams won a combined $5,500 for their ideas to address global issues during the event finals. (Purdue Research Foundation photo/Brad Oppenheim)

A student in Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering was a member of one of four teams of Purdue University students that won a combined $5,500 from Purdue Innovates Incubator during the finals of the Moonshot Pitch Challenge, a semiannual ideation-focused competition.

Fifteen finalist teams had two minutes to pitch their solutions to judges. Winning teams ideated solutions that address challenges to building safety, interactive devices, oyster farming and space travel.

Active Purdue undergraduate and graduate students were eligible to compete. More than 45 teams submitted a two-minute video to explain the problem they were addressing and to propose their solution. Solutions were grouped into one of three categories:

• Earth: Ideas primarily focused on addressing social needs and challenges
• Orbit: Ideas primarily focused on business-to-business solutions
• Moonshot: Ideas primarily focused on solving a seemingly impossible problem

“The Moonshot Pitch Challenge is about ideating bold, audacious solutions to address worldwide challenges,” said Doug Applegate, Incubator associate director. “Purdue students are proving their ability to think critically about problems and then take the next giant leaps to solve them.”

Submissions for the fall 2026 Moonshot Pitch Challenge will be solicited in September.

First-place teams in each category received $1,500 apiece. Teams that won the Best Pitch and Crowd Favorite awards received $500 each.

An ECE student was a member of the team that won first place in the Earth category.

Earth category: AeroInspect. AeroInspect is an autonomous drone platform that uses lidar, imaging and machine learning models to evaluate building conditions, classify crack severity and provide actionable safety guidance to residents.

Team members are Alaqmar Bohori, a student in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Kanishk Israni, from the School of Mechanical Engineering. Bohori said the award will help the team build and train its machine learning model.

“This is the most crucial part of our idea,” he said. “The model will help us guide the drone autonomously and identify and classify structural issues, generating an automated building health report for our customers.”

Israni said the Incubator team that leads the Moonshot Pitch Challenge helped AeroInspect fine-tune its idea by balancing technical feasibility with real-world impact.

“Moonshot also connected us with other company representatives and judges, helping us expand our network and opening doors to get help with moving our startup forward,” he said.

Other Moonshot Pitch Challenge finalist teams that included ECE students were:

• Bring the Focus to Us. Bring the Focus to Us is a hat that tracks brain state and provides instant vocal and visual adaptive feedback to keep users focused. It is designed for doomscrolling addicts and people with short attention spans to help them focus on what matters without distraction. Alzahraa Ahmed, College of Engineering.
• Vision Assist. Vision Assist uses smart glasses and a lidar-enabled cane to expand spatial awareness for people with visual impairments. The system recognizes people and objects, maps surroundings beyond arm’s reach, and delivers real-time audio guidance for safe navigation. Muhammad Zohaib Ali and Aditya Hebbani, College of Engineering.

Source: Boilermakers shoot for the moon with innovative solutions during Moonshot Pitch Challenge