Brownsville Porter Students Gain Real-World Engineering Experience Through NASA HUNCH Mentoring

Since 2022, Brownsville Porter Early College High School has consistently advanced student teams into NASA's HUNCH mentoring competition, where high school students collaborate with NASA engineers on hardware and research projects that could support missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

What Is NASA HUNCH?

NASA HUNCH (High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware) is a nationally recognized workforce-development program with a decades-long legacy of preparing the next generation of innovators and leaders. Coordinated through the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, the program runs annual competitions and remote mentoring via video conference, pairing student teams with NASA engineers for real-world design, prototyping and testing.

How Porter Participates

Porter teams have competed across multiple categories — Design & Prototype, Biomedical Science and the Culinary Challenge — and several entries have advanced to the semifinal rounds since the school began participating in 2022. Claudia Cortez, Porter’s Career and Technical Education engineering teacher, introduced HUNCH after learning about it at a Technology Student Association conference and has guided students through projects and NASA mentorship each year.

Student Experiences: Preparing for College and Research

"Participating in the NASA HUNCH program at Porter had a major impact on my transition to UT," wrote Mario Hernandez, now a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin. He said HUNCH taught him to collaborate with engineers, document work, and tackle open-ended technical problems — skills that helped him begin undergraduate research in his first semester.

Hernandez was part of Porter’s 2022–2023 semifinalist team that designed a lunar scooter wheel. At UT Austin he joined additive manufacturing research under ECE Professor Michael Becker, performing atomic strain analysis on Al2O3 particles using supercomputer simulation data and visualizing results in MATLAB — crediting HUNCH with giving him the communication and problem-solving foundation to contribute immediately.

"Being part of NASA HUNCH taught me so many valuable skills. It honestly felt like real-world engineering, almost like having an actual job with NASA," said Camila San Miguel, a freshman at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. San Miguel was on a Porter design team that reached the semifinals with a diagnostic medical tool adapter.

San Miguel said HUNCH mirrored professional engineering work — deadlines, iterative design, prototype testing and constant communication with engineers. When she began college, she found her mechanical engineering coursework followed the same design process she used in HUNCH, which helped her manage projects, collaborate with teammates and meet expectations without feeling overwhelmed.

Project Highlights and Results

Cortez provided a summary of recent Porter entries and outcomes:

• 2022–2023: A team including Mario Hernandez and Gunar Williams reached the semifinals with a lunar scooter wheel design.
• 2023–2024: A biomedical science project on mental health in space by Dana Perez, Sandra Salazar and Lesly Vega reached the semifinals; a 3D-printed medical devices project by Hazel Hernandez and Mario Hernandez also reached the semifinals. Several other projects earned honorable mentions — including lunar art by Johncarlos Mendoza and Jose Palomo, plus entries for suction cups and a mobility arm.
• 2024–2025: A biomedical science entry led by Camila San Miguel advanced to the semifinals with teammates Diego Padilla, Abraham Ruiz and Silverio Gatica-Portugal.

Current School-Year Projects

This school year, Porter has nine active NASA HUNCH projects across categories:

• Design & Prototype: Mars transit vehicle; two teams competing with "Chess From Trash" concepts.
• Biomedical Science: Two teams working on medication packaging designs; a lunar smart-adaptive habitat concept using AI monitoring to support crew mental health; a portable IV fluid system.
• Culinary Challenge: Two taco teams developing astronaut-ready, nutrition-compliant recipes.

Cortez explained that the Culinary Challenge requires teams to design tacos that meet specific nutritional standards so the dishes could someday be served to astronauts on missions. Porter’s culinary competition is scheduled for Feb. 10.

Why It Matters

Porter’s sustained participation in NASA HUNCH demonstrates how structured mentorship, sustained partnerships with agency engineers, and hands-on project work can prepare high-school students for collegiate research, professional collaboration and careers in aerospace and engineering. Alumni say the program builds practical skills — CAD modeling, prototyping, documentation, teamwork and professional communication — and can open doors to college organizations and research opportunities.