A complete of 38 college students representing 9 groups from Monterey, Pacific Grove and Salinas participated within the 2024 Design Problem, focusing their efforts on using autonomous platforms to watch water high quality, oceans, and the atmosphere. On Might 14, these student-faculty groups have been honored by NPS throughout a ceremony on the Moss Touchdown Marine Labs.
Senior leaders from NPS joined representatives from Design Problem collaborators and companions in recognizing the profitable student-faculty groups, representing Salinas’ Alisal Excessive Faculty, Pacific Grove Excessive Faculty and Monterey’s Santa Catalina Faculty. The groups have been competing for an opportunity to win prizes as much as $2,000, sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate Faculty Basis.
“We began three years in the past with a program to attempt to encourage hands-on STEM studying by an iterative course of whereby you guys are allowed to attempt issues that do not have an answer to them,” stated Dr. Mara Orescanin, director of NPS’ Consortium for Unmanned Methods Training and Analysis (CRUSER) and one of many organizers of the Design Problem. “So that you needed to dabble with a real-world drawback – you need to suppose exterior the field, you need to discover ways to fail and the best way to study from that failure to iterate on the following design. And that is what actual scientists and engineers do.”
Retired Vice Adm. Ann Rondeau, President of NPS, joined Dr. Alan Van Nevel, NPS Affiliate Provost for Analysis, and NPS Basis Vice President Todd Lyons in presenting scholar staff members with letters of recognition for his or her efforts.
Following the ceremony, academics and college students had a chance to tour the historic fishing vessel Western Flyer, made well-known by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts throughout their 1940 voyage to the Gulf of California, and which now has new life as a science, expertise, engineering and arithmetic (STEM) schooling and analysis platform run by the Western Flyer Basis.
“You college students give me a great feeling, loads of hope in regards to the future, as a result of you’ve got proven that you just’re keen to take an issue that you do not know something about, have a look at it, fail – hopefully, not too many occasions – after which attempt new concepts, maintain an open thoughts, and provide you with an answer,” stated Van Nevel. “And people qualities will serve you properly for a very long time to return.”
Earlier this 12 months, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro launched the 2024 Naval Science and Know-how (S&T) Technique, which known as for a better deal with STEM schooling and outreach alternatives throughout the nation.
The Speedy Innovation Design Problem, led by Orescanin and Dr. David Ortiz-Suslow, aligns with this new technique and different commitments by NPS and the Division of the Navy to extend academic fairness in STEM – in addition to to encourage the following era of scientists, engineers, technologists and extra.
“NPS is proud to assist the STEM Speedy Innovation Design Problem with the Workplace of Naval Analysis to spend money on the following era of innovators and leaders for our Navy and our nation,” stated Rondeau. “Whereas the celebratory vitality within the award ceremony was nice to see, I observed one thing else after the occasion that’s the actual reward of such efforts. I watched as one of many younger highschool women confirmed and demonstrated her mannequin to a bunch of scholars as they crowded round her and requested questions. She was beaming with delight, and that’s the payoff of this work – constructing the need for discovery engendered in inquiring minds.”
This 12 months’s Design Problem, which ran from Feb. 1 to April 16, was developed in collaboration with trade and expertise specialists. It featured a deal with autonomous expertise and its use in creating two forms of platforms – one for making ocean and atmospheric measurement throughout storm occasions, the opposite for monitoring coastal water high quality. Based on Orescanin, these components have been impressed by the flooding of watersheds all through Monterey County final winter, in addition to a need to know excessive climate occasions of all kinds.
The “CRUSER Grand Championship,” emblematic of the competitors’s prime honor, and the $2,000 grand prize have been introduced to a staff from Pacific Grove Excessive for its efforts to know the Design Problem’s iterative course of, determine an space to be improved in information assortment, and create a strong prototype for the best way to implement their resolution with an autonomous platform.
Their end result was the “StormChaser Sentry,” which tackled the problem of atmospheric and ocean measurement in excessive climate occasions. Trainer Sally Richmond’s staff took a platform that was designed for wave monitoring and augmented it with sensors for figuring out location, wind velocity, air temperature and humidity, barometric stress, and wave interval and top.
Along with the grand prize, Pacific Grove Excessive took house honors in one of many three runner-up classes, every of which awarded a $500 prize. The varsity’s second profitable entry got here courtesy of scholar Antony Gabrik, who captured the “Persuasive Pitch” award for his video presentation on bettering information assortment to make a connection between actions on land and their organic and environmental impacts offshore.
“That is our third 12 months competing – we have had a good time every year, and we have managed to win an award every time,” stated Richmond. “We stay up for doing it once more subsequent 12 months.”
One other runner-up class, “Greatest Storm Tracker Resolution,” went to Santa Catalina Faculty’s “Crew Wanandi,” which generated essentially the most distinctive resolution for gathering information throughout storms. The staff created an autonomous open-water platform whose spherical design allowed for extra stability and sturdiness in various wave and storm states.
The ultimate runner-up class, “Greatest Water High quality Monitoring Resolution,” was gained by Alisal Excessive and its “Small Natural Remeasuring Instrument,” or SORT, for representing essentially the most distinctive resolution for monitoring water high quality. Along with utilizing a colorimeter that may be programmed for a number of water high quality measurements akin to pH, ammonia or chloride ranges, SORT has a compartment for a whiteleg shrimp, which may function an indicator of excessive pesticide ranges within the water.
“You’ve performed a essential function in designing actual potential options for these issues,” Orescanin stated. “These are precise issues scientists face – and now we have the scientists with us at present who examine these issues at NPS. It’s nice to see such artistic, revolutionary pondering in our excessive colleges. We’re right here to acknowledge that – that each one of you’re wonderful by contributing to this course of, and hope that you just loved your self alongside the best way.
The Speedy Innovation Design Problem program is designed to construct pleasure about STEM, mitigate obstacles to experiential studying alternatives for all college students, introduce college students to rising applied sciences, and strengthen neighborhood capability to supply impactful schooling alternatives. It contains scaffolded curricula that match essential expertise for increased schooling and a contemporary workforce to high school requirements.
Every problem integrates essential pondering, analytic reasoning, drawback fixing and written communication expertise as groups discover purposes of science, expertise, engineering and math to create significant options with international influence.
“The Speedy Innovation Design Problem is a chance for the Naval Postgraduate Faculty to share its distinctive experience in STEM with the local people,” Lyons stated. “The Naval Postgraduate Faculty Basis & Alumni Affiliation is devoted to supporting NPS and has supported the Design Problem since its inception. We stay up for supporting future Speedy Innovation Design Challenges and constructing even nearer connections between NPS and the local people.”
NPS is already planning for the 2025 Speedy Innovation Design Problem, with launch scheduled for the autumn of 2024. As a part of a rising initiative at NPS to foster graduate scholar mentorship locally, the upcoming iteration of the Design Problem will embody the chance for pairing collaborating courses with NPS college students as mentors and to offer perception into profession pathways in STEM. Extra details about the Design Problem program is offered at https://nps.edu/design-challenge.
The collaboration performed underneath the auspices of the Speedy Innovation Design Problem doesn’t represent endorsement of non-federal organizations or their services by the Naval Postgraduate Faculty, the Division of the Navy or the Division of Protection.
