The Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University hosted a Pitch Up! competition, giving undergraduate aerospace students the opportunity to showcase their technical work and receive feedback on their presentation skills.
Based on the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, Pitch Up! challenged the students to describe a technical project or research in which they were involved in three minutes. The students presented their work to a panel of judges that included individuals with technical and nontechnical backgrounds.
Sophomore Brady Allen won first place and $250 with his presentation on the thermodynamics of a Pratt and Whitney turbojet. Second place and the $150 prize went to senior Jacob Collins for his presentation on building a combustion ignition wind tunnel for hypersonic propulsion research. Junior Kevin Lieb took third place and $100 with a talk on acoustic analysis of a leading-edge slat cove filler. Freshmen Collin Invie and Joseph Heimerl were honorable mentions for their presentations on configurable origami antennae and model rocketry, respectively.