Texas Woman’s University team wins first place in NASA contest, hopes to inspire girls in STEM

Five kinesiology students from Texas Woman’s University did not think that they would wrap up their last semester in college trying to find answers for NASA.

The team — called the Oneiroi, after the deities of dreams found in Greek mythology — wanted to find a way help astronauts get better sleep so since space travel disrupts the natural resting cycle.

They competed at the Texas Space Grant Consortium Design Challenge, where undergraduate students are tasked with designing and finding solutions for obstacles that face NASA. It was the only all-female team participating in the November event.

“It really took each and every one of us out of our comfort zones,” Casey Rice, 22, said. “It kind of opened our eyes and kind of just opened up more doors and opportunities for us.”

The students — Rice, Andrea Kim, Andrea Martinez, Natalie Wilkinson and Melanie Meek — spent an entire semester working on how to address circadian desynchronization, the disruption of the sleep/wake cycle, that is caused by the change in the 24-hour light cycle typically experienced in the Earth’s atmosphere. Such desynchronization can have a negative impact on astronauts’ mental, physical and behavioral processes.

“Since astronauts suffer from insomnia, they also have a lack of alertness and just issues with cognitive performance … because their sleep/wake cycle is completely thrown out of whack,” Meek, 21, said.

The team researched how such sleep disruptions are treated on Earth to explore what approaches could be tweaked for space. They wanted to treat astronauts individually, so the women worked on creating a wearable light therapy treatment device that looks like a pair of glasses.

Unlike the engineering students competing against them, the team didn’t know how to use most of the equipment and software needed to code, create and test their prototype. So hours were spent learning those skills through online tutorials, consulting people who were familiar with the tools and going through trial and error.

“Being the only kinesiology majors in the competition that’s an engineering-based competition, you never know how the dice will roll,” Meek said

The women spent a whole month — and about $250 — to create the device. They estimate that the production would cost much less and be done in a fraction of the time if NASA decided to manufacture them in bulk.

Usually, competitors would flock to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, getting the opportunity to tour the facilities. But the event was held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once the team finished their presentation, it felt as if they could “finally breathe” after feeling “underwater this whole semester,” Meek said. Because the project was so intense, it counted toward the students’ internship that’s required to graduate from TWU.

After months of stress, fully investing their time and energy in what felt like taking nearly a dozen classes at once, the team earned first place.

“We were confident in our device, but we didn’t know how it would be perceived as a health science team,” said Wilkinson, 21, the team’s leader. “So just to see it do well was really, really exciting.”

The project also widened the now “limitless” possibilities of their career goals, she added.

“I actually just met a few days ago a person that does physical therapy and athletic training for NASA and for the astronauts,” she added. “That’s an option now. I never thought that I’d be in this position.”

The teammates hope their victory will inspire other women to study and become involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.

Because many of the STEM fields are male dominated, Martinez, 21, said the team felt like the “underdogs.” The university has sent all-women’s teams to this competition for three years in a row.

As a woman of color coming from a low-income background, she never saw NASA as a possibility. Now Martinez wants other young girls to be inspired to “strive for better and not limit themselves.”

“No matter what people say or what other boys say, you can’t do it,” she said.