Chatrabhuj Narsee School Students Win Big at Rochester Institute of Technology's Global Scholar Quest Grand Finale

VMPL
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], August 31: BioFrigid, comprising Dhruv Bora, Shlok Goel and Yugandhara Gaikwad from Chatrabhuj Narsee School, has won the inaugural India chapter of Global Scholar Quest (GSQ), a student innovation program by Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). At the Grand Finale in Mumbai, the team presented BioFrigid Box, an innovation addressing Agriculture & Food Systems, and received a prize of Rs. 1,00,000 for developing a grid-independent, energy-efficient cold storage solution capable of maintaining 10-15°C for up to 96 hours. The students won access to a USD 50,000 RIT scholarship pool along with a seed money of INR 1,00,000 to bring their solution to life.
The Grand Finale brought together 14 finalist teams drawn from top IB, Cambridge and Indian school boards across India. The cohort included students from Sanjay Ghodawat International School, , Pragyan School, DPS International, Shiv Nadar Vidyagyan School, Mahatma Gandhi International School, and Omkar Cambridge International, among others. Their projects covered 8 innovation tracks, including climate and sustainability, AI and the future of work, healthcare and bio-innovation, energy and infrastructure, agriculture and food systems, education transformation, urban and smart cities, social impact and inclusion, environment and pollution, and emerging technologies.
The finalist projects reflected the range of issues that young people are choosing to engage with. Teams developed unique solutions like EcoRelay, a passive system designed to protect urban trees from extreme heat and heavy-metal contamination in soil, PixelToPlanet, a predictive heat-mapping tool that helps cities identify heat-vulnerable areas and simulate interventions to reduce urban heat and RailGuard AI, an autonomous robotic system that detects wildlife, track defects, and obstructions before trains reach them. The ideas ranged from AI to Agriculture, giving the jury a varied set of approaches to consider at the finale. Students from these teams also won brand new electronic gadgets, like a Macbook, an iPad and Bose Headphones to support them in their studies.

Before reaching the final stage, shortlisted teams participated in two to four inquiry-led mentorship sessions with Dr. M. A. Rehman, physicist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and industry specialists. Rather than focusing only on presentation skills, the sessions examined the thinking behind each proposal, asking students to test their assumptions, respond to expert questioning and consider the practical challenges involved in taking an idea forward. The mentorship gave teams an opportunity to revisit their concepts before presenting them to the RIT and industry jury.
"What stood out for us through GSQ was that we were not simply asked to come up with an idea, but to understand the problem properly before trying to solve it. The mentorship made us question some of our initial assumptions and look at our solution from different perspectives. By the finale, we had moved from an idea we thought could work to a solution we had tested, challenged and improved. Winning is extremely rewarding, but the biggest takeaway for us has been learning how to approach a real-world problem with curiosity, think critically and keep improving an idea when someone challenges it," said Team BioFrigid, (Dhruv Bora, Shlok Goel, Yugandhara Gaikwad), Chatrabhuj Narsee School, Amanora (Pune) .
The jury assessed the finalist projects based on the problem being addressed, originality of approach, clarity of thinking, feasibility and potential real-world impact. Dr. S. Manian Ramkumar, Dean, College of Engineering Technology at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), who was part of the jury, said, "Global Scholar Quest reflects RIT's belief that learning is most meaningful when students have the opportunity to apply their knowledge to real problems. What impressed us was how the finalists moved beyond identifying challenges to questioning their assumptions, responding to feedback and refining their ideas into more practical solutions. The projects showed curiosity, creativity and strong problem solving, while also demonstrating the value of giving young students the freedom to think, experiment and build. That is precisely what GSQ set out to bring forward."
The India chapter of Global Scholar Quest ran from May to August through a four-level journey, beginning with a 60-minute centralized online screening, followed by team formation and submission of an approximately 800-word concept note and a three-minute video. Shortlisted teams then received mentorship before presenting their concepts and prototypes at the Mumbai finale. Building on Tiger STRIPES, RIT's initiative that brings its hands-on, experiential learning approach into Indian classrooms, GSQ extends this model to allow students to apply knowledge, test ideas and work through complex problems without a single prescribed answer. This also allows RIT to engage with students earlier in their educational journey, before they enter university.
"What the finalists demonstrated through Global Scholar Quest was a dimension of student potential that traditional academic measures do not always capture. We saw students working through ambiguity, responding to questions they did not have prepared answers for and building on feedback to strengthen their ideas. That is particularly meaningful for RIT because our approach to education has always been rooted in learning by doing. GSQ allows us to see these qualities earlier, while students are still exploring what they can build, how they think and which problems they want to solve. The quality of thinking we saw in this first India chapter reinforces why creating these experiences for students matters," said Kathleen B. Davis, Vice President for Enrollment Management and Associate Provost, Rochester Institute of Technology.
"The range of problems students chose to work on through Global Scholar Quest was as revealing as the solutions themselves. They were looking at issues across sustainability, healthcare, technology, education, social impact and other areas, often starting with challenges they had observed around them. What came through strongly was their willingness to connect curiosity with action. GSQ was designed to give students the space to explore a problem, test an idea and learn through the process of building it. For RIT, seeing this level of curiosity and creativity among young people in India reinforces the value of engaging with students not only when they are ready to apply to university, but much earlier in their journey as thinkers, creators and problem solvers," said Elizabeth Sullivan, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Marketing and Global Strategic Initiatives, Rochester Institute of Technology.
The projects presented at the finale reflected the range of issues students chose to address, from post-harvest crop losses and lack of cold storage for smallholder farmers to urban heat and railway safety, with solutions including grid-independent cold storage, predictive heat mapping and autonomous railway hazard detection. For the finalists, the experience went beyond presenting an idea. They had to defend their choices, respond to expert feedback and consider how their concepts could work in practice, giving them first-hand exposure to the iterative nature of innovation.
With BioFrigid taking the top honor, the inaugural India chapter concludes by highlighting a cohort of students who approached complex challenges with different perspectives and solutions. For RIT, GSQ offers a way to engage with students based on how they think, create and apply ideas, providing a view of potential that extends beyond conventional academic performance.
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