Two ECE student teams have won first and second prizes in the Schurz Communications Innovation Challenge.

HEARD, or Handheld Educational Augmentative RFID Device, was named the top team and won $5,000 on Thursday (Dec. 10) at the sixth Schurz Innovation Challenge at Purdue.

The HEARD team is made up of James Gerber, a student of Mechanical Engineering, and Aakash Gupta, a student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The team created a highly portable and easily customizable augmentative communication device for individuals affected by autism.

"Children affected by autism are having issues when it comes to communication, and current products aren't satisfying those needs. We want to provide an effective method of communication, to give children independence compared to other products on the market," said Gupta. "We would like to iterate what we have, to create a beta prototype before we can user test it and determine its commercial viability."

Placing second and receiving $3,500 was A.C.C.E.S.S., which developed an online educational coding environment to help newcomers and early programmers write and test their code. The members of the team are Mrigank Jha, Jinyi Zhang, Kee Wook Lee, Fengjian Pan, and Pranav Marla, all students of Electrical and Computer Engineering who are taking the course "Vertically Integrated Projects". The instructor is Associate Professor Yung-Hsiang Lu.

"A.C.C.E.S.S. has the potential to reach thousands of new generations of programmers. We're not trying to replace the tools used by professionals, but to create tools students can use along with others to excel in code," said team member Mrigank Jha. "The next steps are to integrate more languages and expand our base into local high schools and college classes. By December 2016, we may be able to start marketing it."

Schurz Communications Inc. sponsors the competition, which is organized by Purdue Foundry and held once each semester. It provides participants the opportunity to test their creativity and skills in developing innovative ideas in media technology. Participants developed and demonstrated prototypes that were judged by a panel of entrepreneurs and media professionals. Fifteen teams and almost 40 people competed in this semester's competition, with each team required to have at least one Purdue graduate student or undergraduate student.

About Schurz Communications Inc.

Schurz Communications Inc. is a Mishawaka, Indiana-based news and information company, which consists of five business segments: Broadcasting Radio, Broadcasting TV, Cable TV, Newspaper Publishing and Digital Media.

The company publishes daily and weekly newspapers in medium and small markets with a combined circulation of nearly 225,000. It also has 10 television stations, owns 13 radio stations and operates three others, owns four cable companies and a phone directory. Geographically, Schurz Communications has a presence in Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming.