An event on Saturday brought out hundreds of people to sample some of the talent and creativity of students at RIT.
This year’s Imagine RIT festival included dozens of inventions and demonstrations. Maxwell Wolbeck is in his fourth year in the mechanical engineering program at RIT. His team presented their project on cosmic radiation shielding.
Wolbeck said the concept for this project started as an idea that came up during a road trip just prior to his transferring to RIT.
“I was driving around with my dad, and I was wondering how Star Trek shields would work when they see like, you know, shields up! And we came up to conclusion that it had to be some type of magnetic base shielding,” explained Wolbeck. “And then when I transferred out to RIT, I joined the space exploration club where I presented my idea. And we figured that we should give it a try.”
Wolbeck said he and his classmates are trying to make a more lightweight version of radiation shields for space applications.
His ultimate dream is to be an astronaut, and to work for NASA or Space X. He already has a summer internship lined up for the summer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Students from RIT’s Dubai Campus were at the Imagine RIT event as well including Meriem Hamidi who is a second-year mechanical engineering student. Her group designed remote control cars and trucks for kids to play with.
Hamidi would like to see more kids and women pursue career fields in STEM fields.
“For example, in my case, there aren’t many girls in the mechanical field.,” said Hamidi. “But that does push me to sort of distinguish myself from everybody else. In my team alone, we are kind of split so we’re 50/50. We’ve got two girls working and two guys. So at least it is being integrated into society (and) mechanical engineering, just generally."
Hamidi said that both electrical and industrial engineering fields have showed an increase in the number of women joining those disciplines.
