A team of undergraduate students from the Naveen Jindal School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas took first place and a $2,000 prize in a sustainability competition held May 2025.
The event included participants from the Naveen Jindal School of Management and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras). The Jindal School team consisted of Saanvi Dusa, a Computer Information Systems & Technology senior; Aditi Tiwari, a Healthcare Management senior; Akshay Mapadath, a Business Administration junior; and Praneeta Srinivas, a Computer Information Systems & Technology. Tiwari and Srinivas are also enrolled in the Jindal Undergraduate Research Scholar (JURS) Program at JSOM. The team won first place and $2,000.
The competition was supported by industry partners Green Worms and Sacred Groves. Akshay Gunteti, cofounder of Green Worms, and Monisha Krishna, cofounder of Sacred Groves, provided real-world sustainability projects for students to solve. Preetha Prabhakar served as an industry mentor and supported the students in preparing them for competition.
The students were evaluated periodically by judges, Douglas Kent, executive VP at ASCM; Kiron Bhaskar, director of global systems engineering at Otis Elevators; and Tan Moorthy, CEO of Revature. Samar Khan, CEO of Trip.AI, and Usman Ghani CEO of Conflucore, provided comments on the final student presentations.
Dr. Ramesh Subramoniam, a professor of practice in the Jindal School’s Operations and Supply Chain Management Area and director of undergraduate research, was the Jindal School team’s faculty advisor and competition organizer.
“We are off to an even better start this year and kicked off the UTD 2026 Sustainability competition last month,” he said. “Four universities are represented including institutions from India and Europe. Three corporate employers have offered real world sustainability problems for the students to solve along with mentoring and support. Fifteen students are participating in the competition and 10 are from the Jindal School. The goal is to integrate an interdisciplinary global learning approach for students and corporations to real world problem solving.”
