IIT Palakkad students bag first prize at IIT Gandhinagar’s Invent@IITGN programme

NEW DELHI, JULY 16: IIT Palakkad students, Prabal Vashisht and Parul Sangwan, have bagged the first prize at the Invent@IITGN event held at IIT Gandhinagar. Invent@IITGN is a six-week annual summer programme where students from nine IITs gather to ideate and prototype inventions that address societal or consumer needs.

Prabal and Parul won the “Best Invention” award, earning a prize of Rs. 2 lakh, for inventing a purely mechanical method to rotate rooftop solar panels to follow the sun without needing motors or battery systems. The device is based on a mechanical clock that uses ancient technology to calculate the movement of the sun.

R. Nambilakshmi of IIT Bombay and Prathmesh Deshmukh of IIT Kharagpur came second for their leak-proof eco-friendly food container while Samruddhi Pataskar and Kalash Nibjiya of IIT Kharagpur procured the third prize.

Speaking about their experience during this program, Prabal and Parul said, “It feels really good to win the first prize...the hard work paid off, there were many ups and downs, and we made four prototypes in the process of making this final invention prototype. This program has enabled all of us how to think, develop a product and patent it.”

28 students were selected from nine IITs across the country including IIT Bombay, IIT Dhanbad, IIT Dharwad, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Goa, IIT Guwahati, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, and IIT Palakkad to participate in this event. The participants of the programme received a stipend of INR 10,000 and a certificate of participation.