Cheng Wu Innovation Challenge

Award

A total of $30,000 is awarded. The judges decide how the funds are divided.

Winners

2025

1st place winner Taptic, 2nd place winner CompresScene, and 3rd place winner Enterprise-Grade AI.

Read about the 2025 winners

2024

1st place winner Live Video Accompaniment, 2nd place winner UAV-miniUGV System, and 3rd place co-winners ARtreides and Mathmemo.

Read more about the 2024 winners

2023

1st place winners Elevate and KLARE with 2nd place co-winner Tell Me Your Story.

Read about the 2023 winners

2022

1st place winner Palm Garden with 2nd place co-winners i-Sight and Multiversity.

Read more about the 2022 winners

2021

Axon-way and Deep Word were co-winners.

Read more about the 2021 winners

2020

Luddy ISE graduate students Veda Narayana Koraganji and Vakar Ahmed of M3DE Pro and Neuroscience undergraduate Maggie Kennedy and her team of NeuroNeursing were co-winners.

Read more about the 2020 winners

2019

Luddy doctoral students Louis van der Elst, left, and Merve Gokce Kurtoglu won first prize for TrophoWell, a platform that serves as an alternative to animal testing in patient-personalized medicine.

2018

Luddy master’s students Tingyu Li, left, and Pavithra Ramamurthy won first prize for “Buddy,” a robot that encourages children with cleft lip and palate to do speech therapy, in the form of storytelling, in their homes.

2017

Luddy master's student Hannah Jones, right, won first prize for "SensAbles," an affordable line of wearable technology made for teens and adults who suffer from sensory overload in environments.

Guidelines

  • Each team member must be an IU Bloomington undergraduate or graduate student who is enrolled full time.
  • Each team must feature at least one student completing a major or minor within the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering.
  • Technological innovations developed for a course may be submitted.
  • All intellectual property submitted for the purpose of the competition must belong to the students who are submitting it.
  • By participating in this competition, you agree to receive any funding through your IU bursar account and to use the funding to support the further development of the technological innovation presented in the competition.

Apply

  • December 5: Information Session, 2-3 p.m.
  • January 16: Information Session, 2-3 p.m.
  • January 30: Applications due, 5 p.m.
  • February 13: Finalists notified, 5 p.m.
  • April 10: Finalist proposals due, 5 p.m.
  • April 17: Final presentations and winner selection, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

IU technology experts review the applications. The top-scoring teams are named finalists and will present at the competition.