A Texas A&M University engineering student’s passion for rock climbing may lead to a new innovation in the field. Mack Ragland pitched his idea for light-up rocks for rock wall climbing and took home the top prize in the U-Ignite Video Competition.
U-Ignite allows students to showcase their creative ideas to improve the world through innovative solutions to problems that impact lives. Students create a one to two minute video to be judged by a committee composed of faculty and staff. The top 10 students then proceed to pitch their idea to a panel of judges.
“U-Ignite is designed to inspire engineering students from freshman to graduate level to act on their innovative ideas,” said Magda Lagoudas, executive director for nonprofit partnerships. “This year’s winners demonstrate the creativity of our students. We invite engineering students to consider participating at least once in the U-Ignite competition during their time in college.”
Ragland, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, won $1,000 for his “Light Climbing” pitch. He proposed to replace the route marking tape used on all rock climbing walls with LED lights. Ragland would use multicolored LEDs, light sensors and a laser pointer to light the rocks and change the color pattern when necessary.
Ragland said that additional uses of light climbing would be for climbing in the dark because of the glowing rocks. As of now, he’s in the early stages of working on this project and is considering moving forward with the design and implementation.
Second place in the competition went to Alfredo Costilla-Reyes and Zachary Burke, graduate students in electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering, respectively. Their product, BitGrange, is an automated hydroponic system for easily growing food in places not previously thought practical.
Third place was a tie between two teams: EZ-Lock and The NanoWell. Alex Content and Zach Kitowski, both sophomores in mechanical engineering, presented EZ-Lock, an innovative bike lock holder. NanoWell is an innovative approach to drinking water and team members included Cole Fincher and Geoffrey Garner, both mechanical engineering seniors, and Jeffrey Ott and Jeffy Ho, both petroleum engineering juniors.
Participants of U-Ignite are eligible to utilize the Engineering Innovation Center and pursue their ideas further.
U-Ignite is an annual competition and will be held again in fall 2016.
