IIT Palakkad Students Bag First Prize at IIT Gandhinagar's Invent Programme

Prabal Vashisht and Parul Sangwan Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Palakkad students have bagged the first prize at IIT Gandhinagar Invent@IITGN. Invent is a six-week annual summer programme where students from nine different IITs come together to ideate inventions that have the potential to address consumer needs.

Prabal and Parul from IIT Palakkad won the Best Invention Award for their invention to rotate rooftop solar panels to follow the sun without the need of battery or motor. Along with the award, they won a cash prize of Rs.2 lakh. The device invented by the students is based on a mechanical clock that makes use of ancient technology to calculate the movement of the sun.

The second prize was bagged by Prathmesh Deshmukh of IIT Kharagpur and R. Nambilakshmi of IIT Bombay. They designed a well-thought leak-proof and eco-friendly food vessel.

Sharing their experience at Invent, Prabal and Parul said that it is a great feeling to win the first prize. For them, the achievement is that their hard work paid off even though there were many ups and downs during the whole process and before the final invention prototype they made four prototypes. According to them, the respective program helped them to think and at the same time develop a product.

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Around 28 students were selected from nine IITs across India for the Invent program such as IIT Bombay, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Dhanbad, IIT Goa, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Dharwad, IIT Madras and IIT Palakkad. All the participants received a stipend of Rs. 10,000 at Invent@IITGN and a certificate of participation.