Day 1

Well…we’re too tired to write too much about day one, but:  we left Durham on time and made it to DC at noon.  From there we took the metro to near Howard University, took a self-guided tour, then watched the USA tie England in the world cup match.  220 miles later we made it to Morristown, NJ by way of Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia and Princeton.  A good night’s sleep and we’re back on the road tomorrow morning.  Check out our map and photo gallery for more pics!  Good night!

Off to Boston!!! Follow Our Blog and Map!!!

Thank you again to all of our supporters!  Tomorrow morning we head towards Boston.  We’ll be seeing Georgetown and Howard universities tomorrow, maybe part of the USA vs. England soccer match, then finishing our day in New Jersey, near New York City!  Big day!  Each night we’ll do our best to update our blog and add pictures to our Google Map.  We hope you’ll join us!

Getting Ready for EurekaFest (at the EPA)!

Wednesday, June 2nd the InvenTeam traveled to the Environmental Protection Agency’s campus in Research Triangle Park, NC.  There our presenters at MIT gave a practice presentation and received feedback from EPA scientists and personnel.  After the excellent feedback that will help us improve before MIT, we took a tour of the green features of the facility.  Thank you so much to the EPA for the great afternoon!!!

Out In The Community

Yesterday we began putting a small version of our invention out in the community.  We spent part of the afternoon at the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association’s “Beaver Marsh.”  Read more here.

Thank You, NC! Just $3,000 Left to Raise!

Thank you so very, very much to the North Carolina community who so far have helped us raise nearly $7,000!  We’re just $3,000 from our goal!  During our conference call with MIT this afternoon, we found out that we’ll be one of the four teams presenting our work to the audience full of amateur and professional inventors at EurekaFest (above and beyond the gallery walks)!

We’ve had great community members giving advice for our fund raising.  Now that the raffle has ended, we’d love to have your ideas.  It’s been suggested that we post how people can donate to our program so we have put that link at the top of our site along with the “Contact Us” tab.  While we’re happy to accept donations, we aren’t afraid to work for our funds either.  Please shoot us any ideas you might have for what we could do to get us to our goal.

If we make it, we will have 11 students (3 female, 8 male) heading to Boston this summer to make North Carolina proud!

Thanks again!  ~Hillside New Tech InvenTeam

New Videos Posted!

You can see our the presentation of our current stage of the invention process at the Durham Earth Day Festival.

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Earth Day Festival!

Durham Earth Day Festival

We had an awesome day out in the community last Saturday!  We spent the morning at the Durham Farmer’s Market at Central Park and then at the festival telling the Durham community about our project.  Our portable display roof is finished and we’ll be taking it all over Durham in the coming month.  We also gave two professional presentations of our work this week at the Student Stem Symposium in Raleigh and at the NC New Schools Project Executive Retreat!  Busy, busy!  We’ll be at Golden Corral tomorrow (Wed 4/21) from 5pm – 9pm and back at the Farmer’s Market this Saturday morning.  We’re well past half way to our goal of raising $10,000 for our trip to MIT this summer and we appreciate everyone’s support!  More to come…

Test Roof Complete!!!

On Tuesday 4/6 we completed our test roof structure!  You can see pictures of our work (and fun) on our photo page.  We’ll spend the next few weeks working on getting our prototypes up onto the roof.

HUGE RAFFLE!!! March 5th – May 1st!

Visit our Raffle Page for more information!  Over $1000 in prizes!

First Complete Concept Designed!

Our invention will be a series of modules that are strung together.  Some modules (like the one pictured above) will contain trapezoidal potting boxes that will hold the roots of our vines.  The module will have a netting or lattice structure that will support vine growth ABOVE the actual roof surface (preventing roof damage).  Other modules will just including the netting/lattice.  These modules can be customized per roof depending on the wants/needs of the home (dense growth, sparse growth, color schemes, etc.).

Our next stage is to finish our test roof on Hillside New Tech’s campus and begin to put prototypes of this design up to the test!