The students of the Polytechnic of Milan with the 'PrimePeerz' project won the first prize of the Amazon Innovation Award 2020, a flight to Seattle at the company headquarters to present their winning idea to the top managers.
The award ceremony, in coronavirus times, took place by videoconference, in compliance with the restrictive measures to contain the infection.
The competition, launched in 2016 by the US company - in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Milan, the Polytechnic of Turin and the University of Rome Tor Vergata - has reached its fourth edition and for the first time has expanded the challenge also ' across the Alps, involving students from French universities such as the École Centrale de Lyon, the EDHEC Business School and the Mines ParisTech engineering university, who challenged each other to win the chance to fly to Seattle together with the Italian winners.
The more than 300 students who participated faced each other in teams of 3 to 5 people and developed a project focused on sustainability. In particular, they were asked to devise an innovative solution for the processes of product picking, packaging, shipping and returns that was as efficient as possible and at the same time allowed the reduction of CO2 emissions, a theme on which Amazon is aiming a lot.
Tareq Rajjal, head of Amazon Transport Services for Southern Europe, the teachers responsible for the project for the three universities involved and obviously the students attended the 'virtual' award ceremony.
The young team of the Milan Polytechnic is made up of Simona Esposito, Fulvio Gargiulo, Giorgio Damuzzo, Romain Lerouge and Nicola De Giusti: for them, as soon as possible, a trip to Seattle will be ready, together with the French winners, to visit the headquarters of Amazon and present the project that earned them the victory to the company's top management. An important opportunity to be able to access the dynamics of the world of work and in particular to see live the way the Amazon team works.
"Four years after the launch" of the competition "we can draw an initial assessment of a project that sees Italy as a pioneer at European level. This year we have decided to offer students a theme, that of sustainability, which is extremely topical for Amazon and we are happy to see the commitment and originality of the proposals that have been presented to us, "explained Tareq Rajjal. "The students who participated in the contest took this opportunity to get involved with a real project, trying their hand at the typical Amazon exhibition format," said Rajjal at the end of the award ceremony.
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Amazon