Over 50 engineering students set out to make a difference in the lives of K-12 school children and teachers during the latest Aggies Invent, which tasked participants to create and develop solutions to problems many schools and classrooms face today.
Aggies Invent, an intensive design experience offered at the Texas A&M Engineering Innovation Center (EIC), provides an environment made to inspire and support entrepreneurship and innovate thoughts between Aggies. Students have 48 hours to create prototype solutions for issues presented at each Aggies Invent competition. Each event has a completely different theme, keeping the students ready for a challenge. The latest theme was “education.”
Huckabee Inc., Capital One and the Texas A&M University College of Education and Human Development sponsored the weekend event. Students from 12 different majors across the university and two students from the engineering academies participated in the latest competition.
First place went to Pattern Picasso. Their winning creation was a board game with interlocking puzzle pieces designed to teach numeric relations. The team members were Alejandra Hernandez, industrial and systems engineering; Grace Fan and Ryan Alderink, computer science and engineering; Kendel Lipe, biomedical engineering; Jack Clark, computer science; and Pulkit Jain, a master’s student in industrial engineering.
Second place went to FRACHouse, who created mini games to teach fractions to elementary students. The team was comprised of Matthew Brady and Sebastian Wever, industrial and systems engineering; Marissa Laur and John Sauer; electrical and computer engineering; Alexandra Beall, general engineering; and Clayton Draughon, computer science and engineering.
Third place was awarded to The Visualizers, whose project teaches chemistry through the use of holograms. The team was made up by Robert Shannon, chemical engineering; Binita Patel and Norbert Yuma, industrial and systems engineering; Shurat Talukder, Steven Michael Kouam Kenmognie, electrical and computer engineering; and Suparna Mukhopadhyay, a master’s student in civil engineering.
The top three winning teams were awarded $1,000, $750 and $500, respectively. The EIC, as well as Aggies Invent, offer support for students to continue working on their project in addition to the prize.
Contributing author: Jessica Spence