UP student team is Shell's 'Pitch the Future' global champ

MANILA: Shell declared today that a group of students from the University of the Philippines has been recognized as global champions — winning the “Pitch the Future” competition of the energy and mobility company.

The “Pitch the Future” competition of Shell involves a series of challenges that unites student groups worldwide to deal with real-world energy challenges. The series is as part of a new "virtual league" that Shell launched under its signature Shell Eco-marathon program.

The Alamat UP team, which included students from various disciplines, won the “Tracking and Reducing CO2 Emissions from Vehicles” challenge, which is supported by Microsoft.

The team had to create an inclusive system prototype that can be placed into a passenger vehicle to monitor and digitally share CO2 emissions from vehicles worldwide. It also gave recommendations on how to decrease emissions from driving.

The team shared their ideas live to a panel of industry specialists, and some highlights from the pitches can be viewed here.

Shell Eco-marathon Global General Manager Norman Koch expressed, “We congratulate Alamat UP for winning one of the categories in our inaugural 'Pitch the Future' competition. They brought great energy, innovative thinking, and creativity to the competition and the judges were extremely impressed with their idea.”

He added, “I am proud of everyone involved in the ‘Pitch the Future’ competition. The team here at Shell worked tirelessly to ensure it could go ahead in the new normal and allow students from around the world to apply their STEM skills and passion to some of the world’s most pressing energy challenges.”

The summary of the concept of Alamat UP team can be seen here.

Over 130 teams from across the Americas, Europe, and Asia submitted their entries for one or several “Pitch the Future” challenges.

A total of 13 groups were chosen to proceed to the finals in four challenge types, with three finalists in every category as well as a wild card entry for the best newcomer group in e-mobility challenge.

Aside from the “Tracking and Reducing CO2 Emissions from Vehicles” category, the challenges involved Decarbonizing Road Freight Transport, with Shell Lubricants; Decarbonizing the Home, with Shell Energy; and Electric Vehicle Battery Recharging, with Shell Recharge.

Shell also collaborated with Adobe to provide the participating teams the accessibility to Adobe Creative Cloud for six months.

Moreover, the NXplorers team of Shell will be spearheading webinars in order to aid groups in conceptualizing best practices for solving problems.

Photo from Shell

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