West River Eagle

Sitting Bull College students selected to compete in NASA Challenge


Fort Yates, ND – Sitting Bull College students Michael LeBeau, Jonathan Catch the Bear, Kandice Hastings and Vania Henry make up one of ten teams chosen to travel to NASA Johnson Space Center in January to participate in a spinoff challenge to develop new ideas for commercialization using NASA’s technologies.

Multidisciplinary teams from Minority Serving Institutions chose one NASA Intellectual Property, brainstormed ideas of how to commercialize the technology, and composed concept papers using the MITTIC challenge guidelines for submission. Through a competitive process, the teams were down-selected to the top ten teams.

According to Glen Philbrick, business instructor and principle investigator of the concept, the Sitting Bull College students proposed commercializing NASA’s Wind Event Warning System. “They chose the topic because wind has impacted all of us in this area in a negative manner at some point in our lives.  WEWS has the potential to provide warning where other technology does not.”

Philbrick explained, “The top ten qualifying teams travel to NASA Johnson Space Center during January 28-31, 2019 to compete for an onsite immersive experience at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. We have had two virtual meetings with NASA thus far, and the students are very excited to compete in January at Johnson Space Center.”

A technical judging committee at Johnson chose the winning teams by averaging scores from the team’s concept paper, poster session, and oral presentation. Innovation, commercial viability, & feasibility of the potential product and its benefit to NASA interests are meriting factors.

NASA will award eight internships to exceptional students for the summer of 2019.

These experiences expose team members to NASA’s research facilities and laboratories, start-up companies, and the opportunity to discuss further development with the NASA Technology Transfer Office. Through these activities, NASA is educating and engaging entrepreneurs, tomorrow’s industry leaders, about the benefits of using federal government research and development assets in commercial applications.

The group’s oral presentation can be viewed on YouTube as a video entitled Nasa Wind Event Warning System.

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