UPES announced that its two teams that participated in the University Challenge of India Innovation Growth Programme 2.0 (IIGP) are amongst the top finalists. As winners each team has received funding of INR 10 lakhs to build prototypes of a submersible unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and space debris management system. This is second major accomplishment by UPES engineering and design students within few weeks; the previous being winning the global CanSat 2017 Competition.

IIGP 2.0. is a joint initiative of the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India; Lockheed Martin Corporation; TATA Trusts; Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSTF); Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI); MIT Energy institute; IIT Bombay; IIM Ahmedabad to accelerate innovative Indian technologies into the global markets using world class commercialization strategies and  business development assistance.

A six member team of UPES students will now be working to develop a prototype of low-cost Submersible Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Using highly advanced technologies including artificial intelligence and image processing techniques this prototype can be launched from an underwater platform, fly in air to perform certain mission and return to the underwater platform. Given its submersible capabilities this UAV prototype will also be able to withstand corrosive underwater environment. The six team members are Rajat Singhal, N Adthiyian, S.M Hamza Hasan, Vaibhav Bhatia from B.Tech Avionics Engineering, Cris Thomas from M.Tech Aerospace Engineering and Vertika Saxena from B.Des Product Design.

The other winner of IIGP 2.0 University Challenge from UPES is Siddharth Ojha, a B.Tech Avionics Engineering student, who will be developing a prototype of symmetrical hyperloop for the management of space debris in low earth orbit. Space debris is a big problem that will only get worse with time. Space junk is beginning to litter space and satellites can potentially fail from collision with debris.

These students have emerged winners under the able leadership of Dr. Kamal Bansal, College of Engineering Studies, UPES, and mentorship of faculty members- Dr. Vindhya Devalla, Mr. Sudhir Joshi, Dr. Amit Kumar Mondal, Mr. Vivek Kaundal, Dr. Kanak Pal Singh Parmar, Dr. Rajesh Yadav and Mr. V. K Patidar.