CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — After more than 200 teams of University of Illinois students presented innovative ideas to a panel of judges in early April, the Cozad New Venture Challenge was narrowed down to six presenters.

And on Thursday, that panel of judges chose two teams to take home the grand prize.

Nora Al

Nora AI is an AI interviewer that allows companies to have human-like interviews on a larger scale. Companies are able to interview all applicants with the program, while also reducing the time a recruiter takes to review each candidate. The project was led by autonomy and robotics graduate engineering student Brijesh Muthumanickam.

Tandemn

Tandemn works to connect underutilized Graphics Processing Units (GPUs, a specialized electronic circuit designed for parallel processing) across institutions. Then, converts them into a scalable and cost-effective workload. This allows organizations to use existing hardware, instead of expensive cloud solutions. The project was led by electrical and computer engineering student, Mankeerat Sidhu.

Tandemn and Nora AI both won first place, each earning $60,000 in investment. All participating teams, however, will be eligible to win from a pool of over $500,000 in funding and prizes.

To read more about the other four finalists, click here.

The program started in February as part of a collaboration with the Gies College of Business and Carle Illinois College of Medicine. 300 teams from across campus participated in workshops focused on financial planning, presentation skills and more. On April 2, about 200 teams participated in Demo Day, where they pitched their ideas to nearly 250 judges.

Since 2000, the Cozad New Venture Challenge has awarded over $3.4 million in funding and prizes to help launch sustainable business ventures.