Penn Hyperloop, a student team sponsored in part by the Mack Institute, made an impressive showing at The Boring Company’s “Not-a-Boring” Competition, a global contest that challenges university teams to design and build advanced tunnel boring machines. Competing against top engineering programs from around the world, Penn Hyperloop earned third place overall and received the “Global Rookie Award”—a significant achievement in their first year participating.
Tunnel boring uses powerful machines to dig underground tunnels with speed and precision, minimizing surface disruption. The Boring Company aims to make this process faster, cheaper, and more efficient to support underground transit systems like the Hyperloop. To spur innovation, the company hosts the “Not-a-Boring” Competition, inviting student teams to design and build the next generation of tunnel boring machines.
Penn Hyperloop was founded in early 2024 by a Penn Engineering student and former SpaceX intern who set out to translate academic research into practical, high-impact engineering. The team started with just four members and quickly built its first tunnel boring machine to compete in a smaller, preliminary version of the Not-a-Boring Competition, where they won first place. In 2025, the team scaled up to compete in the main event, representing a cross-disciplinary group of students from Penn Engineering, Wharton, and the M&T Program.
The student team faced many challenges in the year-long process of developing a competitive machine. Team member Mehul Vemareddy SEAS ‘27 spoke about the difficulties of working within a “niche” space with little publicly accessible information.
“We had to employ first-principles thinking,” he explained. “That means approaching a problem from a basic physics standpoint, not just replicating what already exists. Because what exists is super expensive and definitely out of our league to build. We had to look at the key requirements and figuring out how to meet them in way that worked within our constraints.”
One of the biggest constraints was funding. To finance the project, Penn Hyperloop raised $50,000 in cash—believed to be the most raised by any Penn student club in recent years—and secured another $75,000 worth of parts and equipment.
“Every week, we reached out to maybe 100 alumni or companies, and only one would respond,” Vemareddy said. “It was demoralizing at times, but looking back, the final number came from a collection of small efforts adding up.”
A more logistical challenge involved transporting the massive machine from Philadelphia to the competition site near Austin, Texas. With the motor alone weighing over 500 pounds, the team had to find creative solutions, including borrowing equipment such as construction-grade pickup trucks to move and reassemble the machine safely.
Once on-site, the team worked long days at The Boring Company’s Texas headquarters, dealing with heat, humidity, and frequent rain. They set up tents to shield their equipment and created shared spaces for troubleshooting and collaboration. Rain turned the site to mud, making the final dig day physically demanding.
“Despite the dirt, despite the rain, it was a moment charged with energy and meaning for all of us,” said team member Ilia Kozhelskii WG’26/G’26. “At the competition, the culture was very collaborative. There was no trace of cutthroat rivalry, only a quiet understanding that we were all working toward something greater. Teams often lent each other tape, glue, or whatever tools were needed, without hesitation. Participants shared a common mission: to advance urban connectivity by making underground infrastructure development cheaper and more effective.”
Several of the students who worked on Penn Hyperloop are now spending their summer interning with The Boring Company, including Vemareddy. Both he and Kozhelskii emphasize that the project’s interdisciplinary nature was one of its most rewarding aspects. It gave engineers hands-on experience with business strategy and operations, while business students gained exposure to real-world engineering challenges.
“As an MBA student, managing a complex technical project alongside engineers has been a rewarding experience,” said Kozhelskii. “I came to see how they think: the way they dissect problems, stay rooted in logic, and devote themselves to solving the technical challenges that lie ahead. In turn, I shared what I knew: how to navigate risk, bring structure to operations, build trust with stakeholders, and move a mission forward through fundraising and outreach. It wasn’t just collaboration. It was mutual growth with each of us strengthening the other through shared effort and respect. These moments of shared learning are exactly what define life at a startup, where the lines between business and engineering blur in the pursuit of forward motion.”
Penn Hyperloop plans to re-enter the competition next year and bring the trophy back to Locust Walk—but they’ll need more money and manpower to do it. Connect with them on LinkedIn to learn more about the team and how you can get involved.