The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) beat more than 115 student engineering teams from 27 states and 20 countries to win the weekend's Hyperloop design competition.
On Friday and Saturday, hundreds of students gathered at Texas A&M University to present their plans for overall Hyperloop pod design. They were judged on a variety of criteria, including uniqueness of design, full Hyperloop system applicability, level of design detail, and strength of supporting tests. The MIT group walked away with the Best Overall Design Award.
"MIT has been involved in so many technological breakthroughs in the past century," team captain Philippe Kirschen, a master's student in aeronautics and astronautics, said in a statement. "It just makes sense we would help advance what might be the future of transportation."
But the MIT Hyperloop Team is not the only group headed to California this summer to try out its prototype on the first Hyperloop Test Track. Twenty-two student crews will make the pilgrimage. That includes Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), winner of the Pod Innovation Award, as well as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Virginia Tech, and University of California Irvine—each of which took home the Pod Technical Excellence Award.
"Congratulations to the finalists and all the student teams who competed in the first-ever SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition," John Sharp, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, said in a statement.
Aerospace Hyperloop—a finalist representing the Texas university, will also move on to the competition weekend in California.
"It is our hope that everyone who participated uses the momentum from this historic meeting of young innovators to go out into the world and continue to create and innovate," Texas A&M President Michael Young added. "This weekend's competition proves the future is in very good hands with such an inspiring and talented group of young people."
Technical awards were also given to student teams whose design displayed outstanding technical merit in subsystem and design.
The Hyperloop is the brainchild of SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk, who in August 2013 unveiled plans for a $6 billion system that would allow for high-speed travel between U.S. cities.
But Musk is busy with other things, so he handed the project off to transportation-system manufacturer Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, which last week filed construction permits with California's Kings County to start building in the Quay Valley later this year.
Groundbreaking and principle construction of the five-mile track is slated for mid-2016, ahead of an official public opening by 2018.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.