TEXTILES.ORG
Advanced Textile Products (ATP) and the Narrow Fabrics Institute (NFI), both divisions of IFAI, announced the winners of the 2017 Advanced Textiles Student Design Challenge during the IFAI Expo Awards Ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 28.
This year’s challenge was to use textiles as a major component to design aerospace, medical, military, safety/protective or other wearable and nonwearable textile technology applications.
First Place: From the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities students Quinessa Stibbins, Evan Idhe and Caitlin Hartman took the top honors for their project “Load-Absorbing Stabilization Crew Sock,” a proposed solution to stabilizing astronauts’ feet to reduce the formation of calluses during time in space. (The students also had the opportunity to present their project directly to NASA earlier in the year.) The team took home a prize package worth more than $6,000, which included their trip to IFAI Expo 2017 to present their project to the industry.
Second Place: A Tie: Christina Marchesani, Bridget Deacon, Medhavi Patel and Seongwon Ha from Philadelphia University won with their project “The Guardian.” Also taking a second-place award was the “Forward-Facing Car Seat Restraint System” created by Anne Cops, Abigail Hess, Anika Hintz, Carley Wells and Emily Dykstra from the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
Third Place: Raj Bhakta and Hasan Shahariar from North Carolina State were awarded third-place honors for their project “ThermaWear.”
IFAI sponsors four different Student Design Challenges for students pursuing degrees in the industry, in these categories: Advanced Textiles, Awnings and Canopies, Fabric Graphics and Fabric Structures. For more information, visit ifaistaging.wpengine.com/students.