Three Cal Poly students were awarded $20,000 to fund their innovative product at the third 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, Michael Gallo (industrial technology and packaging), Morgan Francis (environmental management and protection) and Hannah Moshtaghi (computer science), presented their product, The Wheel Wizard, to a panel of judges and placed first among six finalists.
“The diversity within this team was really valuable,” Moshtaghi said. “Having a large breadth of perspectives is important. There might be other perspectives you hadn’t considered before, so it was amazing to be on a team with people from different educational backgrounds.”
This year’s judges included Susie Armstrong, senior vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; Geoff Austin, owner and principal consultant of Flywheel Consultants; Chris Batlle, owner of Mighty Cap Mushrooms; Stephen Holtzman, partner at Radiology Associates and owner of Turbo Radiology; and Aaron McKinnon, science communications specialist.
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), Lanny V. Griffin (biomedical engineering), Eric Sapper (chemistry and biochemistry), Miranda Yin (marketing), Priya Verma (natural resources management and environmental sciences) and Rebekah Oulton (civil and environmental engineering).
The Change the World Challenge is directed by Dawn Neill, interim vice president of student research, and Jill Speece, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering.
By Taylor Villanueva
