General | 4/27/2022 3:45:00 PM

LEAGUE CITY, Texas (April 27, 2022) – Keely Chapman scores game-winning goals for the Texas Woman's University soccer team, and she also provides game-winning assists in the classroom. 

This spring, Chapman was a member of the TWU team which competed in the Texas Space Grant Consortium Design Challenge and took first place overall. 

The five-member team of kinesiology seniors, named The Oneiroi, after the dream gods in Greek mythology, represented TWU in the Spring Design Challenge on April 19-20. 

"I wanted to participate in this competition because it was something different than a normal internship I would have been doing this semester at an outpatient physical therapy clinic," Chapman said. "I also thought it was a cool opportunity to work as a group and pitch an idea to NASA. I never could have imagined saying I worked on a project for NASA."

According to the Texas Space Consortium (TSGC), "The TSGC Design Challenge is a unique academic experience offering undergraduate students an opportunity to propose, design, and fabricate a solution toward solving research objectives of importance to NASA and its mission."

Last fall, the TWU team, also named The Oneiroi, claimed top prize, as the only all-female team in  the competition. In April, the TWU team followed in their footsteps and repeated as first-place winners. 

During this semester, Chapman and her teammates (Avery Foreman, Mercy Obanigba, Brittany Rust (team lead), and Eduardo Urias) utilized the previous team's base design and rebuilt it to provide greater solutions. 

Team Oneiroi set out to achieve the following objective: "to address the potential for decreased alertness and cognitive performance in astronauts due to circadian rhythm desynchronization." 

As a result, the team utilized the fall team's light therapy glasses design as a foundation to create a new product to address astronauts' Circadian rhythm desycronizations, which are attributed to the 90-minute sun rising cycle witnessed from the space station. 

"The solution was a pair of non-invasive, drug-free, personalized light therapy glasses that emit blue light upon awakening, and red light with an additional filter at bedtime," Chapman said. "We created these glasses that would be worn 30 minutes after waking up with blue light exposure in the eyes, to increase the individual's alertness. The glasses would then be worn for 30 minutes prior to bedtime with red light exposure and a filter to block wavelengths of light in the blue spectrum. The red light would inhibit melatonin production that would allow the participant to go to sleep faster and have a better quality of sleep.."

Not only did the team work to create a solution for NASA, they also broadened the application of their product. 

"The way the glasses are made, they can also be used in other areas besides just space," Chapman said. "They can be used for people that work night shifts, people who are experiencing jet lag, and for people in Antarctica or Alaska, where they may not have light from the sun to influence their circadian rhythm." 

The team took their product to the design challenge to compete against other university programs, such as the University of Houston, Texas State University and the University of North Texas. Most of the other teams consisted of engineering students, so their products addressed mechanical problems in space. 

Chapman said, as a team of kinesiology students, it was interesting to be able to present a different design, which addressed the human body. 

"Most of the teams there did not fully understand the scope of our project, since it was about health-related issues, so it was fun to explain the human body to engineers so they could fully understand our project," Chapman said.

After spending almost 300 hours this semester on their design, Team Oneiroi submitted their product, with a poster presentation and short video presentation. Out of 20 teams, TWU won first place overall. 

"Our team was ecstatic to win the whole competition," Chapman said. "Coming into the semester, our advisor told us that a Spring team has never gotten better than fourth in the competition. We set our goal to achieve that, but ultimately we wanted to get first. It was also very rewarding because it proved that all of our long hours were worth it." 

The team's faculty advisor Rhett Rigby, a Texas Woman's associate professor in kinesiology, said he was impressed with the hard work and creativity of this team.

"The team this semester was a remarkable mix of students from differing backgrounds and with various career goals," Rigby said. "I can't say enough about how intelligent, professional and collaborative each team member was this semester. Keely was especially driven, and it's always nice to have a student-athlete on the team. It just makes the team that much more competitive." 

During the course of the semester, Chapman said she enjoyed learning about research and hopes to apply the skills she gained to her future career as a physical therapist. 

"I researched for many hours, learned the basics of soldering and coding, learned how to attach and run an EEG, was a test subject, and helped edit scripts and presentations," Chapman said. " I also learned a lot about the research/study part of the project. We had to conduct our own study, test subjects, and interpret results. I hope to take this with me into the future when assessing patients while being a physical therapist."

Chapman grew intellectually through this project and said she hopes it shows others you can think outside of the box and achieve great things. 

"It feels really cool to have been a part of this competition and do so well in the end," Chapman said. "It also shows people in my program that you can do really fun research that is a little out of our perspective and still achieve great things."

Continuing to go above and beyond, Team Oneiroi also patented their design, so it can one day be used to help astronauts. 

To see TWU's poster and elevator pitch, visit http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/challenge/spring-showcase.html.