Two student teams from Cal State Monterey Bay are headed to Houston this week to pitch business ideas in a NASA competition called Space2Pitch.
They’re among a dozen teams from minority-serving universities—including UC Davis and San Diego State University, which are also sending two teams each—that have sifted through NASA’s massive trove of patented intellectual property. These are innovations created with taxpayer dollars and the student challenge is to choose one and develop a business plan for a commercial application of the product.
Senior Ali Ortiz, who’s from Monterey, is leading a team that also includes Zoe McGowan, Jayden Saechao, Aaron Villarreal and Nicole Hernandez. Ortiz says everyone came to the early meetings with a few patents that they pitched to the group. The “common denominator” among all the ones they considered was a sucrose-treated carbon nanotube technology, which they learned makes carbon nanotubes even more useful. (Carbon nanotubes, which have been around for years, are tiny cylinders of carbon atoms that can be made into sheets and used in myriad ways, such as lighter weight cables and gaskets.)
“It's a very strong product and we were like, why isn’t anybody [using] this?,” she said, “this patent is perfect. It's versatile, It's stronger, it's lighter.”
After more brainstorming and research, she says the team developed a pitch for coating football helmets with the material. Their research included consulting with faculty and holding an actual helmet in their hands.
“We have the physical helmet. We're able to look at the physical, the padding,” she said, “and then from there, figure out, okay, how will we apply our product to this helmet?”
With the goal, she says, of absorbing impact to reduce head injuries.
While they’ve created a business plan, Ortiz says they’re still exploring the particulars of the football helmet market.
“We are getting in contact with athletic directors around the Monterey Peninsula,” she said.
In Houston, they’ll present a poster and give a 9-minute pitch on Dec. 6. So will the other teams, including one led by Marco Hernandez, a Cal State Monterey Bay senior from Watsonville.
“I'm really, really into cars,” Hernandez said, “I love cars.”
That passion led his team to a project to improve electric and hybrid vehicles. The NASA patent they chose is a composite resin. They say it could be used to replace the metal casings that often hold a car’s batteries.
“It's just lighter, it's stronger, and it has the possibility of being 3D printed,” he said. That means it could potentially be custom-shaped for a particular car, he says, to put the batteries in a different place. His team is also suggesting the material would withstand impact, such as a minor fender bender, and severe weather such as snow, better than the steel and aluminum materials used now.
“This could be something that every single manufacturer could use right now and it would make our world safer,” he said. “We would have more range in our electric vehicles. And it would just be more fun to drive, just in general, and it would allow for more creative freedom too, within the vehicles themselves.”
Hernandez says while doing research, he reached out directly to a NASA employee who worked on the patented resin.
“It was definitely surreal to be talking to the person that created that—the material itself,” he said. “It’s cool.”
Hernandez’s teammates are Leif Fraser, Luis Trinidad, Jasmine Bayuga and Eric Villicana.
The students, whose travel expenses are paid by NASA, will spend two and a half days with the other contest participants at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ortiz says she’s curious to hear what other teams came up with. And Hernandez says he’s especially excited to tour the NASA center and see the control room where staff can communicate with astronauts in space.
In addition to the space agency, JP Morgan Chase Bank also provided mentors to the students. The first place team will receive a $20,000 prize to put toward developing their business, with some of that designated for campus advisors. At Cal State Monterey Bay, business professor Dante Di Gregorio advised both teams. In a statement, he said this is the first time the school has participated in the competition and he is proud of the students.
“In eight weeks, they were able to sort through this vast patent portfolio, make sense of the technology and try to develop novel applications,” Di Gregorio said.
