Past Events
December 17-20, 2025
Faculty Development Programme, Bangalore
SDI organisers conducted a Faculty Development Programme from 17 – 20 December 2025 for faculty members who are leading or advising the teams participating in the 2025-26 Challenge. The programme is intended to help faculty become future-ready educators and mentors to students interested in becoming leaders for net-zero.
About 45 faculty members from institutions across India attended the event at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements’ Sadashivnagar Campus in Bangalore. They learned about expectations of the SDI jury, multidisciplinary teaching, human centric innovation, decoding building costs, pricing their products, and more. The programme featured hands-on sessions, panel discussions, and expert-led activities.
December 03-06, 2025
Faculty Development Programme, Jaipur
SDI organisers conducted a Faculty Development Programme from 03 – 06 December 2025 for faculty members who are leading or advising the teams participating in the 2025-26 Challenge. The programme is intended to help faculty become future-ready educators and mentors to students interested in becoming leaders for net-zero.
About 25 faculty members from institutions across India attended the event at the Infosys Campus in Jaipur. They learned about expectations of the SDI jury, multidisciplinary teaching, human centric innovation, decoding building costs, pricing their products, and more. The programme featured hands-on sessions, panel discussions, and expert-led activities.
May 23-25, 2025
SDI Finals 2025
SDI conducted its 5th Finals event at Infosys, Mysuru. The 2024-25 finals had 41 teams, who presented their work on net-zero building solutions to a crowd of over 750 people. Ashish Goel – Founder, OctoLife delivered the keynote speech. The Climate Smart Innovation Exhibition had 30 shortlisted entries that exhibited innovative building solutions geared towards mitigating climate change.
The SDI trophies awarded to all the winners were themselves carbon negative with an embodied carbon of -0.25 KgCO 2 e/Kg. These trophies are made of wood and adorned with a stainless-steel medallion.
Prasad Vaidya, the Director of SDI, wrapped up the event by announcing the 6th edition of SDI.
Watch the recording of the livestream here.
September 18-21, 2024
Faculty Development Programme
SDI organisers conducted a Faculty Development Programme from 18 -21 September 2024 for faculty members who are leading or advising the teams participating in the 2024-25 Challenge. The programme is intended to help faculty become future-ready educators and mentors to students interested in becoming leaders for net-zero.
About 40 faculty members from institutions across India attended the event at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS) Bangalore City Campus. They learned about expectations of the SDI jury, multidisciplinary teaching, human centric innovation, decoding building costs, pricing their products, and more. The programme featured hands-on sessions, panel discussions, and expert-led activities.
May 17-19, 2024
SDI Finals 2024
SDI conducted its 4th Finals event at Infosys, Mysuru. The 2023-24 finals had 37 teams, who presented their work of net-zero building solutions to a crowd of over 750 people. Gagandeep Bhullar – Founder and CEO, SuperHumanRace and Nandan Nilekani – Chairman and Co-founder, Infosys and Founding Chairman UIDAI (Aadhaar), delivered inspiring speeches to the audience. The Climate Smart Innovation Exhibition had 17 shortlisted entries who exhibited innovative building solutions geared towards mitigating climate change.
The SDI trophies awarded to all the winners were themselves carbon negative with an embodied carbon of -0.25 KgCO 2 e/Kg. These trophies are made of wood and adorned with a stainless-steel medallion.
Prasad Vaidya, the Director of SDI, wrapped up the event by announcing the 5th edition of SDI.
Infosys hosted the 3-day Finals event pro-bono, and JSW Cement Limited was a Bronze Sponsor.
Watch the recording of the livestream here and a short event movie here.
September 14-16, 2023
Faculty Development Programme
SDI conducted a Faculty Development Programme (FDP) on 14, 15, and 16 September 2023 for the Faculty Leads and Advisors of registered teams of the 2023-24 Challenge.
The 3-day programme included presentations, panel discussions, in-depth break-out group discussions, and hands-on activities. There were 11 experts, which included 5 jury members of the SDI Challenge. Ice-breaker activities, quizzes, SDI’s twist on an ice-bucket challenge, and a paper aeroplane challenge kept the participants engaged and enthused. Breakout groups sessions enabled them to interact with each other. Faculty mentors also got the opportunity to network with other faculty across the country.
May 26-28, 2023
SDI Finals 2023
After two years of COVID-19 forced virtual events, SDI conducted its 3rd Finals event at Infosys, Mysuru. The 2022-23 finals had 36 teams, who presented their work of net-zero building solutions to a crowd of over 650 people. Innovator and social entrepreneur, Anish Malpani, delivered the keynote address on his initiative to turn hard-to-recycle plastic into stylish sunglasses. The Building Industry Innovator Exhibit had 12 finalist entries from the industry, who exhibited innovative building solutions geared towards mitigating climate change.
The SDI trophies awarded to all the winners were themselves carbon negative with an embodied carbon of -0.25 KgCO 2 e/Kg. These trophies are made of wood and adorned with a stainless-steel medallion.
Prasad Vaidya, the Director of SDI, wrapped up the event by announcing the 4th edition of SDI.
Watch the event here.
September 23-24, 2022
Faculty Development Programme
SDI invited Faculty Leads and Advisors of registered teams of the 2022-23 Challenge to the Faculty Development Programme on September 23 and 24, 2022 at IIHS in Bengaluru.
The programme was intended to help faculty become future-ready educators and mentors to students interested in becoming leaders for net-zero. The two-day agenda had presentations and discussions from experts and past participants addressing the Net-Zero Building Challenge and on strengthening the curriculum to combat Climate Change. The FDP introduced attendees to the resources provided during the 2022-23 Challenge and also outlined how they could use these resources effectively in their teaching and to guide students to work in multi-disciplinary teams. Faculty mentors also got the opportunity to network with other faculty across the country.
March 7, 2022
Ticket to the Finals
On 7 March 2022 , the finalists of the 2021-22 Challenge were announced by the expert reviewer panel of SDI. An additional jury panel with members from the real estate industry was also present at the event. They talked about their impressions of the work done by students and how the ideas that the students have come up with can benefit the real estate industry.
Watch the event here: https://youtu.be/n9o8dDsgBok
December 17-18, 2021
Faculty Conference
SDI’s Faculty Conference was held virtually on December 17 and 18, 2021. The theme of the challenge was Teaching for Climate Action. Over 50 faculty mentors of participating teams attended the conference and gave feedback to the organisers about their experiences with the challenge thus far.
Faculty mentors of winning teams from last year shared insights on how they managed to lead their teams to success. Jury and reviewers discussed their observations from the deliverable submissions and set expectations for stage 2 of the challenge. The conference touched upon the role of teachers in preparing the next generation for concrete Climate Action in our buildings and communities.
September 17, 18 2021
Faculty Development Programme
A virtual Faculty Development Programme highlighted the critical role of faculty mentors in keeping student teams motivated, and guiding them towards collaboration as well as individual growth. Suresh Bhagavathula introduced faculty to the Social Lean Canvas as a tool to comprehensively define their innovation. Rohan Parikh talked about the process of innovating for Infosys to reduce the energy consumption of their campuses by 50%. Deepa Parekh presented her experiences as a green building professional and educator working with multi-disciplinary teams. Faculty mentors reflected upon the challenges their teams would face and brainstormed ideas to guide them in the next 9 months. The organisers shared student feedback from last year’s outstanding faculty applications that identified important qualities of a faculty mentor.
August 25, 2021
US-India Clean Energy Partnership event
The U.S. Department of Energy, the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), and the Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE) conducted a virtual event titled ‘Building the Next Generation with Solar Decathlon: Sharing Highlights and Best Practices from 2021 Design Challenges in the U.S. and India’. The event celebrated the inaugural SDI challenge and recognised the efforts of students and the industry for innovating climate change solutions in the building sector. Alumni from challenges in India and the US showcased their work. Solar Decathlon participants Khushi Daxini and Nathulal Suthar Team Ferb talked about their design of an educational building in the 2020-21 Challenge and their use of kinetic facades and radiant cooling systems to achieve comfort and net-zero performance.
