Three Cal Poly students were awarded $15,000 to fund their innovative product at the fourth annual Change the World Challenge.
The interdisciplinary competition is a transformative student design challenge created to address the world’s most pressing contemporary problems.
Bill Swanson, a 1973 industrial engineering alumnus and retired Raytheon chairman and CEO, started the Change the World Challenge to give students a chance to address global challenges.
This year’s winners, Lea Joan Graham (natural resources management and environmental sciences), Grace Kathryn Hurley (manufacturing engineering) and Zoila Anuri Kanu (computer science and software engineering), presented their product, Buzz Off, to a panel of judges and placed first among five finalist teams.
This year’s judges included Susie Armstrong, senior vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; Ed Burnett, retired Lockheed Martin engineer; Michael Allwein, technical director at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems; Sara Ford, senior developer relations engineer at Google; and Roger Benham, CEO of Leak Control Services and Materials Engineering Department lecturer.
Change the World Challenge participants worked closely alongside faculty mentors who guided the students throughout the process. This year’s mentors were Christina Firpo (history), Eric Sapper (chemistry and biochemistry), Miranda Yin (marketing), Priya Verma (natural resources management and environmental sciences) and John Oliver (computer engineering).
The Change the World Challenge is directed by industrial and manufacturing engineering Assistant Professor Jill Speece.
By Taylor Villanueva
