BATON ROUGE, La. – Today, a team of eight students from Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology Academy emerged victorious from the second annual High School Offshore and Technology Stars Challenge, which was co-hosted by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Ocean Energy Safety Institute (OESI) at Louisiana State University. Other participating schools include West Feliciana High School, Plaquemine High School, Mathematics, Science and Arts East, Mathematics, Science and Arts West, Starship Academy, and Lee Magnet High School.
Bryan Domangue, BSEE Petroleum Engineer, welcomed the students to the Tech Challenge with a strong message of encouragement for the young competitors. “Thanks to the schools and all of the students who are participating today. It’s going to be challenging, but fun,” said Domangue. “Thanks also to LSU for hosting today’s tech challenge and for volunteering to help mentor today’s participants.”
During the challenge, the students collaborated within their teams to design and build an energy harvesting circuit based on NASA-developed piezoelectric technology, which generates an electrical charge when it vibrates or bends. The circuits enabled the teams to charge battery packs for remote-control cars, which they then drove through a course on LSU’s Tiger Stadium football field, accumulating points for course completion and the distance their cars drove in a ten-minute period.
Team Tiger Bytes’s performance in several challenges won them the championship. They defeated 15 other teams to claim the $2,500 grand prize, as well as a $1,500 teaching grant for their school.
“At BSEE, we believe that helping students explore science and technology is crucial to maintaining and building our workforce of engineers, physicists, geologists, marine biologists and other STEM disciplines,” said Domangue. This year, BSEE and OESI expanded the Tech Challenge to include Baton Rouge, La. and Bakersfield, Calif., and plan to add other cities including Anchorage, in the years to come.
-- BSEE --