All-female team wins first place in a NASA contest
Andrea Kim, Andrea Martinez, Natalie Wilkinson, Melanie Meek and Casey Rice pose with their light therapy device at Texas Woman's University in Denton. The team created the device for a NASA-sponsored challenge.
The only all female-team that participated in the Texas Space Grant Consortium Design Challenge won first place for inventing a light therapy wearable device that helps astronauts sleep better. The challenge that the students Rice, Andrea Kim, Andrea Martinez, Natalie Wilkinson, and Melanie Meek spent their entire semester on was about how to address circadian desynchronization, the disruption of the sleep/wake cycle, that is caused by the change in the 24-hour light cycle typically experienced in the Earth’s atmosphere. They came up with a wearable light therapy treatment device that looks like a pair of glasses to treat Astronauts individually. Since kinesiology majors, they also had to learn all the technical skills required in their device. The team hopes their victory will inspire other women to study and become involved in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM.
