Small, unmanned aerial vehicles to combat malaria, a concrete canoe, a jumbo Connect 4 game for people with disabilities and a "smart" dog house were among the more than 100 projects presented by University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students at the school's second annual "Technology Symposium" on Thursday.
The projects were presented at the Chattanooga Public Library and were geared toward solving real-world problems, like reducing hospital wait times at the Children's Hospital at Erlanger Kennedy Outpatient Center or constructing a road to a new tire plant in Rhea County.
A mobile parking application called "Open Spots" that allows UTC students and faculty to find available parking spots in a certain lot on campus from their smart phones won the top award from The Company Lab, a nonprofit accelerator that supports entrepreneurs. The mobile app creators - Terrince Bramhall, Evan Lane, Chase Futrell and A. Ofoli - now have the chance to participate in the CO.STARTERS entrepreneurial summer program where they will be mentored by entrepreneurs who have tested and scaled successful businesses.
Marcus Shaw, the chief executive officer of CO.LAB, presented the award Thursday. He said it "epitomizes" the idea that every innovation has to have a customer in order to make it an entrepreneurial opportunity.
"As part of that, I think this customer is near and dear to you all," he said to the crowd. "Everybody here who is a student or faculty (member) probably has a hard time finding parking spots ... I saw this team present what I thought was a really unique solution, and a solution that has not only has a customer right away but has a strong build in terms of the product."
All of the students who participated were from the College of Engineering and Computer Science at UTC. On the fourth floor of the downtown library, senior engineering students Phillip Seeley and Nicholas Kilbun presented a proposed design for an access road that connects State Route 29 to the new Nokian Tires plant in Dayton.
Tennessee Department of Transportation officials came to the students last semester with a design, but Seeley and Kilbun said their group moved the road farther away from 200,000 square feet of wetlands and closer to existing infrastructure to create an access road that would cost close to $2 million.
While TDOT probably won't use the design, the students said it was a good project to practice maintaining environmental standards while also working with other local entities, like a railroad company nearby. They won third place overall for the civil engineering department.
Not far from Seeley and Kilbun was Ronald Brown, an 18-year-old mechanical engineering student, who stood in front of a giant wooden frame with holes cut out of it that was created as a jumbo Connect 4 game for individuals with disabilities who are residents at Open Arms Care.
The jumbo game can be mounted to the wall and took a couple of months for Brown and his four other group members to complete, he said. According to Brown, the larger Connect 4 game will help residents improve motor skills and move around more.
"Since they have such a broad range of residents, we had to consider all of them in the design process," Brown said. "It has been really eye-opening."
Contact staff writer Allison Shirk Collins at ashirk@timesfreepress.com, @AllisonSCollins or 423-757-6651.