Gatton Academy Almuna Member of WKU All-Female Engineering Team in NASA Competition

Western Kentucky University’s Engineering Department is sending what may be the only all-female team to the NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition this week at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“We’re probably not going to see a lot of girls at the competition and we will probably be the only all-girl team,” Bowling Green junior Christine Gries said of the May 25-28 competition. “It’s different working with all girls when you’re used to working with all boys and will probably be working with all boys in your professional career.”

Team ARTEMIS (Amassing Regolith with Toppers Engineers eMploying Innovative Solutions) is made up of eight females from all three engineering disciplines at WKU. The team built a robot that will be digging up regolith (lunar soil) and performing in different competitions in the process.

“It is a cool thing to work on an engineering project with all girls because it is such a male-dominated field,” said Brittany Logan, a sophomore from Englewood, Ohio.

The purpose of the Lunabotics Mining Competition is to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in a competitive environment that may result in innovative ideas and solutions, which could be applied to actual lunar excavation for NASA.

“The primary reason for WKU’s involvement in the competition is for our students to develop valuable engineering skills,” said Dr. Kevin Schmaltz, team advisor and associate professor of Mechanical Engineering. “Our experience has also been that WKU teams do very well in the competitions we enter.”

The other  team members are mechanical engineering students Morganfield junior Amanda Huff, Smith Grove junior Whitney Tyree; civil engineering students Reynolds Station junior Sarah Bertke, Mount Washington junior Erica Rigney; and electrical engineering students Scottsville junior Maegan Young and Gatton Academy student Kaitlin Oliver of Central City.

This project, which began last fall, is being used by most of the students to fulfill their junior project requirement. Each person contributed something different to the robot.

“I was on the mechanical set team and my main focus was the hopper (the shovel) and getting the motor for the machine,” Huff said. “There is a certain weight limit to the machine. It has to be able to hold and move 1,500 pounds.”

“I was a part of the electrical sub team,” Young said. “We were in charge of all the electrical stuff. We had the motor controllers.”

For information, contact Dr. Kevin Schmaltz (270) 745-8859 or the Engineering Department at (270) 745-2461.