We are pleased to announce the creation of the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program Awards to recognize outstanding participants through individual and team awards along with monetary prizes starting Spring 2020. Student and team categories include Leadership, Outstanding First Year/Sophomore, and Share with the World. Additionally, graduate students and faculty are recognized for the efforts in mentoring successful teams. Nominations were sought from students, faculty, and staff.  The following individuals and teams are recognized for their contributions for Spring 2020.

Individual Student Awards

• Outstanding Leadership – Isha Ghodgaonkar, CAM2 Embedded Computer Vision 2 Team
• Outstanding First Year/Sophomore – Justin Qualley, Katherine Sandys, and Avanish Subbiah, CAM2 Drone Video Analysis Team

Team Awards

• Share with the World – broader impact through outreach, publications, grants, creating opensource code, etc.
  • FEMTA Suborbital Experiment Team, Martin Degener, Justin Chow, Collin Czech, Caleb Kracke-Bock, Yue Yu, Noah Franks, Ani Govindhan, Mark Hartigan, Sam Kiddy, Annika Lumpp, Benjamin Lumpp, Adi Menon, Radhay Patel, Tristan Shahin, Jordan Soberg, Dr. Alina Alexeenko, Dr. Anthony Cofer, Steven Pugia, Katherine Fowee
  • CAM2 - Continuous Analysis of Many CAMeras Teams: Embedded Computer Vision 1, Embedded Computer Vision 2, Software Engineering, Crowdsourcing, Forest Inventory Analysis, Drone Video Analysis, and Video Analytics for Understanding Human Behavior

Mentorship Awards

• Faculty Mentor Team– CAM2 Mentors:  Prof. Guofan Shao, Prof. Keith Woeste, Prof. Ming Yin, Prof. David Barbarash, and Prof. Yung-Hsiang Lu
• Faculty Mentor of First Year Researchers – Prof. Eric Nauman, Lunabotics and Robotic Exploration teams
• Graduate Student Mentor – Abhishek Umrawal, DeepFreight team

Prizes – A spotlight on VIP website and Twitter and recognition at Fall 2020 ceremony plus the following monetary awards: $150 scholarship per individual student awards, $500 funds available for benefit of team for team awards, $200 scholarship for individual graduate student mentorship awards, $250 discretionary award to individual faculty mentor or $500 for team of faculty mentors

About VIP:

The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to earn academic credit while engaging in authentic and extended research and design projects related to active research areas of Purdue faculty members and national, international, and industry-sponsored design challenges. Students can participate on interdisciplinary and vertically-integrated teams (first-year through seniors) with faculty and graduate student mentors for multiple semesters to address these real-world research and design challenges.