A team of 37 students from Delft Technical University (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, one of the world’s top engineering schools, is participating in trials, similiar to Olympic qualifying trials, to try to compete in Elon Musk’s Space X Hyperloopcompetition, on Sunday, July 22, in California, with Cognizant, the team’s lead sponsor, cheering them on.

Cognizant has worked with the team over the past year as its Prime Partner sponsor, providing mentorship from company experts who work, day-to-day on breakthrough technologies powering connected vehicles, places, and products.  In addition, Cognizant has supplied the technological infrastructure necessary to test the reliability and safety of the TU Delft designs, as well as financial support.

The concept behind the Hyperloop is the creation of a high-speed transportation system using a vehicle (or pod) that travels in a low-pressure tube with reduced air resistance. With the potential to exponentially reduce travel times, the underground network would make travel less expensive, faster, and more efficient than airplanes or trains. In Sunday’s competition, approximately 5 teams of students from around the world will showcase their designs to make the concept a reality. In a test tube that is 1km long, student-designed pods will accelerate to more than 400km per hour and then decelerate back to a standstill in just 12 to 15 seconds.

If they qualify to compete, Sunday's race will be TU Delft’s third Hyperloop competition. TU Delft beat out approximately 200 teams in January 2017 to win the “Highest Overall Score; Design and Construction Award” for their pod design. 

“The Hyperloop concept is on the cutting edge of transportation’s future and these students represent some of the world’s brightest young minds – putting their creativity to this challenge is yielding some amazing results,” said Karthik Krishnamurthy, Senior Vice President and Global Markets Head, Cognizant Digital Business. “It will be today's undergraduate and graduate students—and the cohort of pupils behind them in STEM programs such as those Cognizant is investing—who build the future of mobility. Cognizant’s multi-disciplinary team of social scientists, design thinkers, and creative technologists are proud to support the TU Delft team as they work to develop the fastest mode of land transportation ever.”

Visit @CognizantEvents on Twitter to follow the competition. 

Read more on the TU Delft team and the future of transportation:

Delft Hyperloop 

Cognizant’s Gajen Kandiah

Cognizant’s Manoj Mathew