Illinois Institute of Technology students take top prize with Tree of Life carbon capture device

Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS), a leading technology company that delivers advanced design and validation solutions to help accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, announced the winners of the Keysight Innovation Challenge 2022. The six finalist teams presented their innovations to a panel of esteemed judges in Santa Rosa, Calif., on October 29, 2022.

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Keysight Chief Customer Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Sales Mark Wallace (right), presents a check to members of the winning Illinois Institute of Technology team (from left), Chloe Rubinowicz, Colin Prochnow, Katarzyna Staron, and Saurabh Saluja. (Photo: Business Wire)

“It was fascinating to see the wide range of innovative solutions each student team created when posed the same challenge: to design an IoT device that will help the world reach net zero,” said Jeff Harris, Vice President of Portfolio and Corporate Marketing at Keysight, who also served as a judge and co-sponsor of the Keysight Innovation Challenge. “Each team looked at the question from a different angle and formed a unique solution. I’m excited for the future when we see this level of innovation and enthusiasm from our next generation of engineers.”

“We added another layer of criteria to this year’s challenge, requiring that all teams were woman-led and had at least equal representation of women to men,” said Renee Morad, Innovation Challenge program lead. “It was inspiring to see such diversity on the stage and to shine a spotlight on today’s women in STEM who are leading their teams and leading the way for future generations of innovators.”

After an impressive set of student presentations the Innovation Challenge awards were presented to:

First Place – $30,000 USD in cash to the design team and $10,000 USD of Keysight test equipment to their university:

• Chloe Rubinowicz, Saurabh Saluja, Colin Prochnow, Kaya Jones, Anthony Banuelos, and Katarzyna Staron from the Illinois Institute of Technology for their entry, Tree of Life: Carbon Capture.

“Our team learned and experienced more from this project than anything else we’ve done before,” said Chloe Rubinowicz, lead of the Illinois Institute of Technology team. “This has served as a pivotal moment for us, learning to work with a team to develop an idea and actualize it. Winning this competition has been surreal, and we’re so excited to see where our team goes from here.”

Second Place – $25,000 USD in cash to the design team and $10,000 USD of Keysight test equipment to their university:

• Vaishali Maheshkar, Yaoli Zhao, and Patatri Chakraborty from the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, for their entry, Piezo-cantilever Sensor for Real-time Monitoring of 8 Greenhouse Gasses with LoRa Communication.

Third Place – $20,000 USD in cash to the design team and $10,000 USD of Keysight test equipment to their university:

• Meredith Hunter, Kaitlyn Phan, Berke Lunstad, and Grey Aycock from Vanderbilt University for their entry, EcoBuddy: IoT OBD2 Monitoring Device for Fuel Efficiency and Emission Consciousness.

The world-class panel of judges for the 2022 Innovation Challenge event included:

• Juan Pablo Celis Garcia, Youth Engagement Specialist for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
• Mehdi Sadaghdar, Electrical Engineer and popular YouTube influencer known as ElectroBOOM
• Anand Lalwani, 2019 Keysight Innovation Challenge Winner
• Gabriella Garcia, 2019 Keysight Innovation Challenge Winner
• Jeff Harris, Vice President, Keysight Corporate and Portfolio Marketing
• Mark Wallace, Chief Customer Officer and Senior Vice President of Keysight Global Sales
• Susan Morton, Senior R&D Director at Keysight Technologies
• Chris Williams, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Keysight Technologies.

“The innovative projects, ideas, and solutions of each participant demonstrates the commitment of the younger generation to tackle environmental issues,” said Juan Pablo Celis Garcia, of UNEP, who served as a judge. “Their creativity and passion for solving issues of climate change, nature loss, and pollution is truly inspiring.”

The Keysight Innovation Challenge is a design competition challenging graduate and undergraduate engineering and computer science students to conceptualize an Internet of Things (IoT) device or network of devices that will provide carbon neutrality monitoring at the community or corporate level. The contest supported Keysight's goal to achieve carbon neutrality within its Corporate Social Responsibility policies. It aimed to inspire innovation to help the world reach net zero by 2050 and required each team to be woman-led to encourage gender diversity in STEM.

The competition attracted 52 entries from around the world, with each entry scored by a panel of eight semi-final judges on metrics such as sensor effectiveness, AI capabilities, and cybersecurity resilience, with device prototypes evaluated by Keysight’s IoT Security Assessment software. The general public also played a role in judging by voting for their favorite design entries. These votes contributed to 10 percent of each entrant's overall score.

For more information about the 2022 Innovation Challenge, check out the competition video or go to the event website at: www.keysightinnovationchallenge.com. For images of finalists, media can visit: www.keysight.com/find/innowinner-2022-images

About Keysight Technologies

Keysight delivers advanced design and validation solutions that help accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world. Keysight’s dedication to speed and precision extends to software-driven insights and analytics that bring tomorrow’s technology products to market faster across the development lifecycle, in design simulation, prototype validation, automated software testing, manufacturing analysis, and network performance optimization and visibility in enterprise, service provider and cloud environments. Our customers span the worldwide communications and industrial ecosystems, aerospace and defense, automotive, energy, semiconductor and general electronics markets. Keysight generated revenues of $4.9B in fiscal year 2021. For more information about Keysight Technologies (NYSE: KEYS), visit us at www.keysight.com.

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