On Friday, July 17, at 10:30 AM EDT the Delft University of Technology Hyperloop team, sponsored and mentored by Cognizant, will push its Hyperloop vehicle to the limits by attempting to beat its own previous race record speed of 202 km. The race will be live-streamed here.

The 33 students from the Delft Hyperloop team originally hoped to achieve first place in the 2020 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, organized by SpaceX creator and visionary Elon Musk. For the past three years, the Delft team has competed at SpaceX in Los Angeles against student teams from all over the world to create the fastest, most innovative vehicles—known as Hyperloop pods – and raced them in a 1-km-long vacuum tube.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s annual Hyperloop competition will not take place at SpaceX. Instead, the Delft team has decided to race the Atlas04 Hyperloop vehicle in open air at their 368-meter “Long Test Track” in Hilversum, Netherlands, and try to break their own vacuum race record.

As part of Cognizant’s commitment to contributing to the development of the next generation of STEM professionals, the Cognizant team has provided the Delft students with funding and technical advice and assistance on critical systems engineering for the Hyperloop systems. This is the second year Cognizant has been a lead supporter for Delft students working on the Hyperloop competition.

“Hyperloop represents an exciting challenge and opportunity for STEM students to demonstrate their innovative skills and help develop a future of faster, more economical, more environmentally sustainable transportation,” said Dr. Rouzbeh Amini, Senior Director Industry 4.0, Cognizant, and himself a graduate of Delft. “I am very pleased that once again, Cognizant is offering its knowledge and resources to help the Delft Hyperloop team take their design to the next level.”

Please join us in cheering on the Delft team!