Welcome to our page! We are so excited to share our journey through the IPPD program with you. Our project for this upcoming year is to design a device that can measure grip pressure for elite athletes. Specifically, we will be working with the Tampa Bay Rays. Before going further in depth about the project, we would first like to introduce ourselves.

Our team consists of five student members who have spent the past four years focusing on various engineering disciplines, our coach who is a UF Professor, and two liaisons who work for the Tampa Bay Rays as a Biomechanist and a Baseball R&D Analyst. Here we are:

Team Members:

• Alexandria Ozycz – BME
• Ana Patricia Michelena – MSE
• Dakota Roy – ME
• De’Andre Miles – EE
• Ernestine Celestial – ME

Coach: Dr. Van Oostrom

Liaisons:

• Michael McNally 
• David Marshall 

Now that you have met the team behind this project, we’d like to further explain the key objectives of this project. Our goal is to design a pressure mapping glove that can measure grip pressure and a player’s unique grip signature. By the end of this project, we want to have a functional prototype that can be tested by a professional baseball player that can withstand sweat, weather conditions/ temperature changes, and is extremely durable in the case that the player was to be hit with a fast-paced pitch. Moreover, we also want to ensure that the glove is capable of transmitting the data that it collects from the individual players to an internal data base. Therefore, this data can be easily accessible to coaches, players, and biomechanists who can then study the data to see the different grip patterns players present based on the outcome of their trip up to bat.

We believe this product could be a game changer for the Tampa Bay Rays and for the future of baseball. We are extremely excited for this amazing opportunity and look forward to updating you weekly on the progress we are making!