Fall 2024 Student Design Challenges
The Official TAMU ThinkTank Fall 2024 Challenge Suite
NASA'S Gateways to Blue Skies Competition
Blue Skies expands engagement between universities and NASA's University Innovation Project, industry, and government partners by providing an opportunity for multi-disciplinary teams of students from all academic levels (i.e., freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, and graduate) to tackle significant challenges and opportunities for the aviation industry through a new project theme each year. The competition is guided by a push toward new technologies as well as environmentally and socially conscious aviation.
Solar District Cup
The Solar District Cup is a collegiate competition that challenges multidisciplinary student teams to design and model distributed energy systems for a mixed-use campus or district—groups of buildings served by a common electrical distribution feeder. The competition engages students across disciplines—engineering, finance, urban planning, sustainability, communications, and more—to reimagine how energy is generated, managed, and used in a district.
RASC-AL
RASC-AL competitions fuel innovation for aerospace systems concepts, analogs, and technology prototyping by bridging gaps through university engagement. RASC-AL is open to undergraduate and graduate university-level students studying fields with applications to human space exploration (i.e., aerospace, bio-medical, electrical, and mechanical engineering; and life, physical, and computer sciences). RASC-AL projects allow students to incorporate their coursework into real aerospace design concepts and work together in a team environment. Interdisciplinary teams are encouraged.
AIAA Design Competitions
AIAA design competitions allow students to perform theoretical work and gain real-world insight into the design process. Whether students are designing an aircraft, engine, or space vehicle, they will go through all the primary design steps involved in determining a solution to a Request for Proposal (RFP). This includes determining a hypothetical solution, testing the hypothesis, evaluating its effectiveness, possibly doing some cost analysis, and finally preparing a report that will be submitted in response to the RFP. These responses are reviewed by experts in the field who will provide constructive responses to the students.