Using three components — a vacuum ascender, an adhesive anchor and a rope ascender ­— the Utah State University team took its design to the National Center for Medical Readiness training facility in April to compete against 16 universities that included Arizona State, Johns Hopkins and Brigham Young University for the top honor.

In August 2011 teams were given the warfighter-focused engineering design challenge, $20,000 for materials and fabrication and nine months to come up with a demonstrable solution. Teams were judged on both objective measures (weight, size, velocity achieved) and subjective measures (ease of operation, usability, stealth, innovation and elegance).