Student Entrepreneurs Win $250K to Develop Tech to Detect Guns, Track Suspects in Schools

When Arnav Dadarya ’26 was a high school senior in Los Angeles, someone reported a shooting on campus. He followed the drill, taking cover under a desk and keeping his phone in his pocket as a SWAT team rushed in. It turned out to be a false alarm, but the panic was real. Dadarya’s teachers “had no clue” about what was happening, he recalled.

For the past three semesters, Dadarya and 11 University of Maryland classmates have developed a tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect a gun carried visibly within a school and track the suspect’s movements while school staff and security get automatic alerts. Soon, they will introduce their technology to the real world as co-founders of a startup.

On Thursday their group, DefenX, earned $250,000 after winning the inaugural Xperience Competition, an initiative that kickstarts the careers of budding entrepreneurs who strive to develop a tech solution to a societal issue. DefenX’s win was announced during a gathering of investors, panelists and UMD stakeholders at the Amazon HQ2 complex in Arlington, Va., part of the NEXPLORE 2040 future technology summit co-organized by xFoundry and SpaceCom, in collaboration with NASA.

DefenX’s system uses video cameras, machine learning and a geographical coordinate system to identify weapons and monitor suspects. The technology relies on several AI features that the students can’t discuss for proprietary reasons. The students’ design also put heavy emphasis on mental health services following an incident

“We’ve made this technology as beginning-to-end as possible,” said team member Srinidhi Gubba ’26.

This inaugural competition is part of xFoundry, a UMD-based organization that empowers students in different disciplines across campus to work together to create innovative business ventures that tackle grand challenges. This year’s contest included 89 students across more than two dozen disciplines and representing each of UMD’s 12 schools.

That diversity of thought underscores “what we call disruptive collisions—when different disciplines interact with each other to bring all their creativity to solve a problem,” UMD President Darryll J. Pines said during Thursday’s gathering. “xFoundry is the embodiment of that.”

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The 14 teams vying for this year’s prize were tasked with developing an AI system that can autonomously detect an active school shooter and notify authorities quickly with the information they need to respond effectively. Their members belong to the first generation of Americans for whom school shootings are an unyielding threat: In the past 25 years, at least 360,000 students have experienced gun violence at school, according to Brady United, a gun violence prevention organization. The latest incident was on Wednesday, when a high school shooting in Colorado left two students hospitalized and the suspected assailant dead.

Open to undergraduates and graduate students, the 15-month Xperience Competition requires students to form multidisciplinary teams and develop an investment-grade product along with a business plan, product strategy and a presentation for investors. An optional three-semester course provides instruction in entrepreneurial concepts like team building, product development, and collaboration. Competition entrants were judged by UMD experts and interdisciplinary professionals outside of the university.

This year’s funding award will come from the University of Maryland College Park Foundation, and DefenX will receive assistance from seasoned professionals in the entrepreneurial, tech and legal fields.

“This program allows every student from every University of Maryland discipline to focus their passion, energy and talent on a solution that takes a major world problem off the board,” said xFoundry founder and CEO Amir Ansari, an engineer with more than 60 patents. “They’re building real, viable products on their own, with no spoon-feeding.”

Over the next several months, DefenX will refine its product, seek further investment and assemble a staff before introducing the technology to K-12 schools.

“To unlock the potential that education holds … we have to ensure that teachers and students and leaders actually feel safe. This xFoundry competition is critical to us reaching that goal,” said College of Education Dean Kimberly Griffin, who announced Thursday’s winner.

A second student cohort is already working on technologies to address the next Xperience global challenge, centered on mental health. 

Organizers intend to open the competition to students beyond UMD in the future. Last week, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, sponsored by the School of Pharmacy, became the second university to join xFoundry.