In 2015 Illinois Tech Trustee Madhavan Nayar (M.S. IE ’68) and his wife, Teresa, on behalf of the Nayar Family Foundation, established a $1 million gift at the university to fund the Nayar Prize to encourage and challenge faculty, staff, and students to develop breakthrough, innovative projects that will, within three years, produce meaningful results with a societal impact. Three projects were selected with each team receiving $100,000 to jumpstart its efforts during the first year of the prize cycle. At press date, the decision was made regarding the next phase of the prize cycle. Visit web.iit.edu/nayar-prize for this update on the Nayar Prize I.
The Nayar Family Foundation gave the Illinois Tech community a second opportunity this year to collaborate and problem-solve by announcing the Nayar Prize II, a $1 million-plus prize package to benefit three more teams of researchers. Those teams and their projects are A Data-Driven Crime Prevention Program (members include Miles Wernick, Armour College of Engineering; Lori Andrews, Chicago-Kent College of Law; and Yongyi Yang, Armour College of Engineering); Cyberbullying Early Warning and Response System (members include Libby Hemphill, Lewis College of Human Sciences, and Aron Culotta, College of Science); and Microfluidic Drug-Microbiota Interaction Platform (members include Abhinav Bhushan, Armour College of Engineering; Genoveva Murillo, College of Science/IITRI; and Rajendra Mehta, College of Science/IITRI). Visit web.iit.edu/nayar-prize to learn more about the Nayar Prize II projects.