Future engineers spend day at Harris Corp. competition

PALM BAY – The future CEO of Google, or even Harris Corp., may have been among the more than 100 local high students who spent the day at Harris' Palm Bay campus, participating in the company's third-annual Harris/Student Design Challenge.

No doubt there was a lot of young talent and brain power present.

The students, from seven Brevard County high schools, were tasked last fall with developing Android phone applications that were used Friday for a series of tech challenges at Harris' Palm Bay campus. The goal was to capture a character, "Professor Aardvark," using smart phone applications they have spent months developing.

Coming out on top in the "judges' competition" was a team from Titusville High School called the "Anti-Aardvark Alliance." Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy's "Midnight Crew" came in second, while the Palm Bay Magnet High School's "Crimson Pirates" were third.

The event was part of the Harris K-12 Outreach Program. In this event, volunteer engineers from Harris started working with local high school students last September, assisting them in developing solutions to various technical challenges.

"Students had to design their algorithms and functions and put them all together in a single app for the smart phone," said Mike Freeman, an embedded software engineer at Harris. "It's pretty involved."

Harris provided a students with a framework to place their codes, but the students had develop the algorithms, write all the functions and conduct all the testing.

"Many of these students are repeaters to the challenge," Freeman said. "They were in the challenge last year and they liked it so much that they wanted to do it again. We are constantly amazed at the creativity of these students."

The challenge also has grown in popularity. It started with five schools and fewer than 100 students participating. It has grown to seven schools to nearly 115 students.

Harris' student design challenges caps off a busy week at Harris. On Monday, company executives and local lawmakers formally unveiled the $130 million Harris Technology Center in Palm Bay. Also taking place all week at the new center was a "tech expo" which showcased some of Harris' leading-edge technologies.

Here's something else students interested in engineering should keep in mind. The personal finance Web site NerdWallet.com ranked Brevard County as the third best metropolitan area in the country for engineers — pay and opportunity. Huntsville, Alabama, came in at No. 1 and Warner Robins, Georgia, was No. 2.

Contact Price at 321-242-3658 or wprice@floridatoday.com.