JGU students excel at INRIA France AI Grand Challenge 2026
Two teams of JGU students advanced to the final stage of the INRIA France AI International Grand Challenge 2026, one of the most prestigious global platforms dedicated to the future of artificial intelligence. The two JGU teams — Team Tark.AI and Team SLAM — worked under the aegis of the Cyril Shroff Centre for AI, Law and Regulation at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), with faculty members of the Centre serving as mentors.
Organised by INRIA, France's National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, the competition invited university students from around the world to pitch AI-powered solutions exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming higher education with the goal of informing public policy. The competition ran in two stages — an initial submission round followed by a final stage of submission of project work for selected teams.
Notably, Team Tark.AI received the highest number of public votes among all competing teams globally and was awarded the Public Choice Award. In recognition of this achievement, INRIA invited Team Tark.AI to present their work in France, with their entire trip fully sponsored. More information is available here:
The presentation coincided with one of the world's leading , which also featured participation by Shri Narendra Modi, Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, further highlighting the international stature of the platform on which the team will represent JGU.
A brief description of each of the teams and their work is provided below.
Team Tark.AI: Winners of Public Choice Award
Team Tark.AI won the Public Choice Award at the Final Stage, securing more public votes than any other team in the global competition. The team, comprising Krisha Mankarmi (JGLS), Heysha Zaveri (JGLS) and Amogh Atwe (Jindal School of Government and Public Policy) pursued this initiative through the Cyril Shroff Centre for AI, Law and Regulation, mentored and guided by Prof. Ashwin Upreti.
Their project asks a question that cuts against the grain of contemporary AI development: rather than accelerating output, can AI deepen the process of thinking itself? Tark.AI conceptualises a ‘Large Learning Model’, a deliberate counterpoint to the Large Language Model; designed not merely to provide answers, but to make reasoning visible and measurable within higher education. The platform guides students through a structured Socratic workflow: issue identification, classification, justification, challenge, and reflection.
Drawing on legal education, AI governance and pedagogy, Tark.AI's recognition at the INRIA AI Grand Challenge reflects the growing global appetite for responsible, human-centered learning design.
Team SLAM: Finalists, INRIA France AI International Grand Challenge 2026
Team SLAM (Student Learning Assessment Model) advanced to the final stage of the competition with their proposal 'AI in Re-imagining Assessment: The Situated Learning Assessment Model (SLAM)'. The JGLS team, comprising Akshit Mathur, Kashish Goel, Keertika Saini, Sarang Phulwaria, and Vaibhav Kumar, were mentored and guided by Prof. Spriha Bhandari and Prof. Paavni Jain, faculty members of the Centre.
Their work addresses a timely and urgent challenge — as generative AI grows capable of producing polished essays, assignments, and reports, traditional output-based assessments are becoming increasingly unreliable as measures of genuine student learning. The team's proposal reimagines evaluation by shifting focus from what students submit to how they think; advocating for reasoning, knowledge application, and reflective understanding over final products. The work advocates for interactive, application-oriented assessment methods: viva voce examinations, real-time problem-solving, reflective questioning, and contextual tasks, all designed to assess authentic comprehension in an age of AI.
Rather than treating AI as a threat, SLAM seeks to integrate it responsibly within education, preserving academic integrity and critical inquiry.
