NMSU’s Team DeSIGN, a collaboration between the PIxL Lab in the Computer Science Department, the Department of Engineering Technology & Surveying Engineering, the Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Psychology Department, was named one of four finalist teams for the Body Sensor Networks 2016 Icehouse Challenge to design wearable computers for disaster responders. Team DeSIGN leveraged its collective experience studying and designing for disaster contexts, unmanned system control, and wearables to develop a winning design. At the BSN conference, US Coast Guard operatives will undertake a live-action disaster response simulation game using the wearable software designed by the competing teams to determine the best design.

The team will receive wearable prototyping equipment (including Sony’s SmartEyeglass platform) and funding for travel. The competition carries a grand prize of $20,000.

Team DeSIGN consists of:

• Sachin Sunka (PIxL, CS)
• Sultan Alharthi (PIxL, CS)
• Hitesh Nidhi Sharma (PIxL, CS)
• Rolfe Sassenfeld (ET&SE)
• Cayden Wilson (ET&SE)
• Wei Tang (ECE)
• Igor Dolgov (Psych)
• Zachary O. Toups (PIxL, CS)