Houston City College students finish among nation’s top 20 after reimagining NASA technology

Three Houston City College (HCC) Honors College students transformed a NASA-developed technology into a proposed automotive safety system designed to reduce nighttime headlight glare, earning a spot among the nation's top 20 teams at the 2026 NASA ORBIT Challenge.

The NASA ORBIT Challenge invites students from colleges and universities across the country to develop new applications for NASA technologies. The team from HCC included Kayla Millender, Sofia Waheed and Malexa Patel, who advanced to the final round and earned a $15,000 team prize for their innovation, ORBEES, which is Optical Redirecting Beams for Enhanced Efficiency & Safety. 

“Our students were competing against mainly four-year institutions,” said Robin Reagler, Ph.D., Honors College director and advisor. “Students were asked to select NASA-developed patents and scale them up. The HCC students chose innovations for Earth.”

The ORBEES project focused on a NASA patent originally designed for optical solar fiber conversion. Inspired by widespread complaints about bright headlights, the team explored how this technology could be adapted to improve automotive safety.

Millender, Patel and Waheed, all from the Fort Bend area, proposed adapting the fibers into an add-on layer for headlights. Rather than relying on cameras, sensors or complex software, the design would passively control the direction of visible light instead of increasing brightness.

Headlight glare has become an increasing safety concern as brighter LED headlights become more common on roadways. Traditional headlights disperse light, causing glare. ORBEES would create a precise, focused beam toward the road instead of directly into the eyes of an oncoming driver.

“ORBEES takes a high-angle straight light and reduces that,” said Patel. “You could still see the road without the glare going off to the side.”

Waheed added, “The goal was to make something that wasn’t super complicated. We wanted something that could be integrated into everyday vehicles and remain adaptable and cost-efficient.”

The concept took about seven months to complete and included a 15-page technical paper, a pitch presentation, a video and extensive research. The team surveyed about 200 people and interviewed experts from the University of Texas at Austin and Rice University.

Beyond automotive applications, the students identified potential additional uses for ORBEES, including smart roadway and street lighting, emergency vehicle visibility systems and aviation runway lighting.  

Millender, Patel and Waheed credit the Honors College with helping open doors that led to the NASA competition.

“If it weren’t for the Honors College, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity,” said Millender, who is headed to Prairie View A&M this month to pursue a mechanical engineering degree.

In addition to earning prize money, the team gained valuable research, presentation and networking experience.

“We really enjoyed listening to the other teams present their ideas and seeing their processes,” said Patel, who is heading to the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR this month to continue her studies. “This project strengthened my research and technical writing abilities.”

As for Waheed, who will be attending Rice University this fall, the experience helped prepare her for future academic and professional opportunities.