Up and coming brilliant students took on tough security challenges Thursday and Friday, March 26-27 at the annual Pantex Innovation Challenge event, held at the Innovation Outpost at Amarillo College.
The event, sponsored by PanTeXas Deterrence, LLC (PXD), designed issues directly related to national security, which allowed students to have the unique opportunity to interact with Pantex employees and gain valuable insights into the world of national security. In addition, they could discover exciting career opportunities.
This is the third year of the Innovation Challenge, which is sponsored annually by PXD, the management and operating contractor for the Pantex Plant in Amarillo.
Brenda Dillard, Program Manager for Academic Partnerships and Technology Transfer at PXD, said, “We get school, especially our strategic schools like Amarillo College and WT along with AmTech to get a problem, a real problem that we have at Pantex, and get those brilliant minds to solve the problems for us.”
Dillard said that the funds actually go to the students and that Pantex hopes that they can turn it into something that actually can help solve a problem.
“For example, when we did the event at Texas Tech, they came up with a solution that we are trying to implement at Pantex right now,” she said. “And it’s not just the problems that they solve. These students then have a pipeline to us so they can come to Pantex as interns, and then we’d like to hire them as full-time employees.”
Dillard said that the first-place team gets $5,000, the second-place winning team receives $3,000 and the third-place team gets $2,000.
The winning team on Friday was announced to be Team M.A.D., who was mentored by Matt Reyes. He said that this was the third time they had won a place and that last year they took first place in the overall competition. “It was primarily between Texas Tech and Texas A&M,” he said. “I’m excited for the kids — they are the ones that put in all this effort.”
“I hate to say it, but I really don’t do that much; they put in the effort,” he said. “I’m mainly here to keep them on task and make sure they’re addressing the problem, along with teaching some of the professional skills they’ll need down the line. They were seriously working until at least 10 p.m. last night and here early this morning.”
Reyes said that the students really can surprise you with not only their general knowledge, but their ability to put things together, go find information and come up with innovative solutions.
Teams had such names as Nuke Town AI, Team M.A.D., Team Inspector Gadget and T Supply Chain Gang.
In the two-day competition, teams tackled tough problems and then presented their findings to the judges and audience.
Questions tackled issues, such as how to safely dispose of explosives and waste from the plant; how to reduce SQA effort, risk and dependency on users by automating compliance and guiding users through every step; and how to create special glasses to help with benefits of AR and VR in training wherein they see a real-time video to cut down on travel time.
Before the top teams were revealed, students were invited to solve Wacky Inventions, which pair two unlike objects together and were asked what kind of wacky invention could be created.
One young student, Jazmine Gonzales, said “I’m familiar with the idea of going into the problem, and I’ve done competitions like this before. I had an understanding of what I needed to do, but it was interesting because I’m on the business side of this.”
Gonzales said that it was fun to step out of her comfort zone and meet new people and do something different like this competition.
“I’m really big into the arts,” she said. “I do theatre at Tascosa and like public speaking.” She said that although she’s not into engineering or the mechanical sides of anything, it was fun to see people who do this and see them in their environment.
Top three teams
The winners of the contest will be able travel out to the Pantex Plant to participate in a competition between West Texas A&M University and Texas Tech University later in the year, according to Dillard.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Students solve tough challenges for Pantex issues at Pantex initiative
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
