As it turns out, space technology research isn’t just for astronauts and NASAscientists. A new local event has a way for creative types to develop innovations that could potentially be disruptive here on earth and in outer space.
The Space Health Innovation Challenge, a new “hackathon” taking place Feb. 7 – 9 at the BioScience Research Collaborative at Houston’s Rice University, is inviting all creative innovators and entrepreneurs to come together and take on some of NASA Johnson Space Center’s greatest challenges. The hope is that designers, developers, doctors and others will form a dialog with Houston’s space community, and this joint community will get the ball rolling on developing new innovations for both space and earth.
NASA, which isn’t formally affiliated with the event but provided the challenges that event attendees will try to tackle, has publicly expressed its need to prove its relevance amid massive budget cuts. At JSC, executives previously told the Houston Business Journal that the local center will focus on partnering with community members to commercialize its technologies and show that human space exploration is beneficial to today’s society.
Brian Lang, chapter head of Health 2.0 Houston, which sponsors the hackathon with Enventure, said he hopes the event will bring together the space and startup communities.
“There is a robust ecosystem when it come to innovators in the space community — I didn’t realize how big it is,” Lang said. “But you don’t see them in the startup world. We want to introduce startups to innovators who want to commercialize research at JSC.”
Many of the challenges at the hackathon involve health since JSC has a large focus on human wellness in space. However, most of the challenges also involve data visualization and communication technologies, such as an improved wireless network. Ideal solutions to these challenges should be applicable in outer space and on earth.
“I think it’s critical that people understand that there needs to be multiple stakeholders (for innovations),” said Dorit Donoviel, deputy chief scientist and industry forum lead for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, which is an event sponsor. “It will be hard for a product created just for NASA to survive. But the fun thing about creating a product for space is you have to think differently. You have to think more creatively about the world around you, and that may spur some interesting concepts.”
Teams that work on the challenges have a chance to win office hours with JSC and NSBRI staff as well as membership to Brightwork CoResearch, a local research space.
“At the end of the day, it would be great to have some ideas that we could actually use and develop,” Donoviel said. “We as an organization have some funding we can award to someone who wants to develop a good idea. But it comes down to execution. We want someone to pick up and run with the ball.”
Challenge-Driven Open Innovation 