Two student teams from Cal State Monterey Bay will travel to Houston in early December to compete in NASA’s MITTIC Space 2 Pitch, an event that challenges students to come up with novel ways to utilize materials the space agency has developed.
Only 12 teams were selected from applications nationwide and eight of those teams come from just four universities. Including CSUMB, UC Davis, San Diego State and Texas A&M are also sending two teams.
The other universities are Michigan’s Andrews University, Adelphi University in New York, and Bowie State and Morgan State universities, both in Maryland.
The contest was open to minority-serving institutions and students from all fields of study.
Business Professor Dante Di Gregorio, who incorporated the NASA contest into his class on entrepreneurship and is overseeing the teams, said CSUMB’s performance has been remarkable.
“To have two of the 12 teams chosen in this nationwide competition is pretty amazing,” Di Gregorio said, “especially when you consider this is the first year we’ve participated.”
He added: “It shows our students can compete with the best and it speaks to the strength of our programs here at CSUMB.”
Students propose new ways to use NASA patented technology
The students were given access to a trove of NASA patents and challenged with selecting one NASA intellectual property and use it to create a product or service with commercial applications.
They had eight weeks to do it.
Senior, Marco Hernandez, who leads one of the CSUMB teams selected to pitch at next month’s event, said his interest in automobiles led them to focus on the latest innovations in the automotive industry, in particular hybrid and electric technology.
“We thought about what the biggest problems were and everything we came up with was related to the battery,” Hernandez said.
Their deliberations paid off and Hernandez and his team will present their business idea of using a NASA-patented plastic for encasing car batteries. This particular polyamide is mixed with carbon fibers for strength and is heat resistant. It is also 3D printable, which raises the prospect of molding the casing of the batteries in ways that could make them fit in more efficient places in an electric vehicle.
In addition to working on the project, Hernandez and his team undertook a massive amount of supplemental reading.
“There are tons of journals and articles we were reading to really decipher what this compound was,” said Hernandez, who is a business major and is working toward a career in marketing or business development in either the sports or automotive industry.
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The second CSUMB team that will head to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Dec. 3 and Dec. 4 to make their business pitch, is led by Ali Oritz.
Ortiz’s team proposes to use sucrose-treated carbon nanotube technology to deliver superior impact absorption and exceptional lightweight properties to football helmets. The helmet’s outer shell, reinforced with NASA-grade materials, would offer a 30% increase in tensile strength compared to traditional helmets.
“Essentially what we did was create an innovative helmet design for college athletes, specifically in high contact sports,” Ortiz said. “The helmet delivers superior contact absorption while having exceptional lightweight properties.”
Ortiz, who plans to develop her business acumen and training into a career in the real estate industry, said working on the project, putting together their own business plan and then being selected to pitch to NASA has been a reaffirming experience for the entire group.
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“We can go into the world without doubting ourselves and be proud of what we’ve presented,” Ortiz said. But there is one other thing she and her group mates discuss when they talk about this thrilling accomplishment.
“We are very excited to put CSUMB on the map,” Ortiz said. “We are glad to be part of this bigger thing; we are showing the world that anybody from anywhere can grow into something more, and that is really great.”
In addition to pitching their business proposals, the CSUMB teams in Houston will tour NASA facilities, network with NASA employees and industry experts, and take part in subject matter expert sessions.
The winning group will be awarded $20,000 and a trip to the MITTIC Accelerator in Silicon Valley where they will receive coaching and mentorship to develop their winning business and solution.
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