OPTIMUS PRIME winners visited NASA Goddard. Peter Cullen, the voice of the official OPTIMUS PRIME character, came to the center to work with each group of students on Thursday, April 24, 2014. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard
As students prepare to return to school for the 2014-2015 academic year, the Innovative Technology Partnerships Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is pleased to announce educational scholarships for top-placing students in NASA’s most recent OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest. The scholarships for the first, second and third place winners in each age category (elementary, middle school and high school) are being sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Foundation and may be used to support current and future educational pursuits.
“Our support of the contest aligns with our goal of promoting the many disciplines of science and engineering available to students,” said Matt Schatzle, executive director, ASME Foundation. “The ASME Foundation is committed to supporting the continued growth of technical professions with our scholarships.”
The NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest challenged students to submit videos describing their favorite NASA spinoff. Spinoffs are technologies originally created for space and modified into everyday products used on Earth. Examples include items such as memory foam, invisible braces and scratch-resistant lenses for eyeglasses.
“The OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Contest is an innovative way of building a dialogue with the public regarding the benefits of NASA research and development outcomes,” said Nona Cheeks, chief of Goddard’s Innovative Technology Partnerships Office. “The students’ creativity and skill demonstrated in each of the videos helps NASA to be more effective at raising public understanding of how our technologies provide benefits as space applications as well as in industries such as environmental, medical and manufacturing.”
For information about NASA and agency programs, please visit: http://www.nasa.gov and http://technology.nasa.gov/
For more information about ITPO, please visit: http://itpo.gsfc.nasa.gov
For more information about the upcoming challenge, please visit: http://itpo.gsfc.nasa.gov/optimus
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