2016 Advanced Textiles Student Design Challenge Winners Announced

Advanced Textile Products and the Narrow Fabrics Institute, divisions of the Industrial Fabrics Association International, announced the winners of the 2016 Advanced Textile Student Design Challenge on Oct. 18, 2016, during the Advanced Textile Reception following the Advanced Textiles Conference at IFAI Expo.

This year’s student design challenge was to use textiles as a major component to design aerospace, medical, military, safety/protective or other wearable and non-wearable textile technology applications.

University of Massachusetts-Lowell students Linda Pratto, Christian Bain, Patrick Anderson, William Hallissey and Dana Pierce were the first-place winners for their project “WindHawk.” WindHawk is a wind energy system that supplements the use of diesel generators in austere environments. The team took a prize package worth more than $6,000, which included a trip to IFAI Expo 2016 to present their project to the industry.

Second place went to North Carolina State University student Raj Bhakta for his project, “Low-cost, Low-power, Multimodal Biometric Sensing Garment.” Third place went to Julia Duvall and Nicholas Schleif from the University of Minnesota for their project, “Shape Memory Alloy Hug Vest.”