By Ryan Ostry
Bugle Reporter
@RyanOstry_BR18
rostry@buglenewspapers.com
When kids go away to college, there are some common and popular majors they tend to gravitate to, such as accounting, marketing or education.
When it comes to Bolingbrook native Francis Levins, there are other career aspirations circulating in his head.
Levins, who is a Computer Engineering major at Bradley University, is a part of a group of Bradley students chosen to work with NASA on the second phase of the NASA S.U.I.T.S Design Challenge (Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students).
“My friend actually went to a conference that was for women engineers and when she came back she me and a few other people if we would be interested,” Levins said. “I had to make a proposal for it and send it in.”
The Design Challenge is part two of the program in which university student teams design and develop spacesuit interfaces and experiences with the Microsoft HoloLens.
Microsoft HoloLens is the first self-contained, holographic computer, enabling users to engage with their digital content and interact with holograms in the world around them.
Bradley was one of the few schools chosen for the first year of the program in early 2018, and students now have this opportunity at NASA headquarters again.
“I think that it’s really cool that they hire and bring in college students like myself to help NASA with their own work and learn a lot more about them,” Levins said. “I like the aspect that I’m contributing and helping them out to design things for the future.”
Students from engineering, computer science, public relations, interactive media and other majors are working across disciplines on this project.
For the second year, they’re focusing on utilizing object recognition and simplistic design using Augmented Reality to improve communications between space and Earth and make space missions more efficient and less stressful on astronauts.
For Levins, being able to capture an experience that he has dreamed about as a young boy was even that much more personally rewarding for the college senior.
“I’ve always thought space exploration was very cool ever since I was young, so getting this opportunity really means a lot to me,” Levins said.
This project is an extracurricular activity for the students and not connected to any course.
They submitted their designs, budget, timeline, and concepts in October, and it was just announced that they are one of the final schools chosen to present their program to NASA and Microsoft.
Levins also added that with not everyone from the group being a Computer Engineering major, the culmination of different majors adds to their group which he then said will make them more successful going forward.
“The way the challenge is set up is that we have about a half a year which is different from last year,” Levins said. “It’s also really nice because we have a lot of people from all different majors, so with that different experience working with other people brings different type of thinking to our group.
“Towards the end of this challenge we actually get to go to the Johnson Space Center [in Houston] and then you get even more hands on experience there, you learn a lot of work place experience. This is really fun to me, I would not mind doing this [after I graduate for a career].”
This is the fourth project that Bradley has participated in with NASA, the team meets every Tuesday evening to work on the project which is led by their Lead Faculty Advisor, Heather Ford.