Emad Abbas and Majid Taha, engineering students at the American University in Dubai, earned first and second place, respectively, at Amazon Transcend 2026.

Mr. Abbas designed the Rails-First Station, a freestanding bridge that slides from a warehouse loading dock to a truck’s floor. It gives workers a guarded walkway over a drop of more than 1 meter and keeps weight off the truck’s tail lift. The design requires no modifications to trucks or buildings.

Mr. Taha proposed an AI inventory planning tool that forecasts demand by product and city to help Amazon decide which products to stock closer to customers for same-day delivery. His proposal outlines a nine-week pilot in Dubai to test the approach, with the goal of raising local product availability from about 65% to 85%.

Abbas Yousefi, a finance student at AUD’s School of Business, secured third place with his project, “Setting the Speed Bar: AI-Driven Same-Day Delivery Optimization for Amazon UAE.” His proposal presents an AI-powered strategy to optimize same-day delivery across cities and product categories, aiming to increase sales while maintaining profitability and protecting operating margins.

Launched by Amazon UAE in 2023, Transcend is a university case competition that challenges students to solve real problems in retail and logistics. Students use Amazon’s Working Backwards method to develop their proposals, and finalists present their ideas to Amazon employees.