Bangladeshi students from Lamar University win third place at AWS AI Pitch Competition in Texas

A team consisting of three Bangladeshi students has secured third place at the AWS AI Pitch Competition, a regional contest at Lamar University that drew innovators from across the university and the wider Southeast Texas business community.

The third-place team was led by Md Shahadat Hossain, a graduate of Lamar University, alongside teammates Md Asfaqur Rahman and Md Masum Billah – two doctoral students from the same university. Together, they presented "AI Estimator", an artificial intelligence-based platform built to modernise how construction projects are estimated.

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AI Estimator applies artificial intelligence to automate scope understanding, cost calculation, and pricing optimisation, generating detailed cost breakdowns and professional project proposals within minutes.

The judges' interest in the project reflected its practical, industry-ready design, an approach shaped in large part by Hossain's own background. With over a decade of hands-on experience across construction, manufacturing and operations, he brought a working knowledge of the problem the platform was designed to solve, an understanding that the team says gave the pitch its credibility with judges evaluating commercial potential alongside technical merit. Hossain and his teammates say they intend to keep developing AI Estimator, with an eye toward its eventual use as a practical tool for construction firms managing project estimates at scale.

The competition was jointly organised by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Lamar University Small Business Development Center (SBDC). Entrants were asked to design artificial intelligence-driven solutions to practical industry problems, with judges evaluating both the creativity of the ideas and their commercial viability. The top three teams were awarded funding of up to $50,000, and the event brought together participants with a wide range of professional and academic backgrounds, making a podium finish a notably competitive achievement.