Student Experience From Senior Design to Startup: How a Wildfire Competition Sparked a UT Spinoff What began as a design course project grew into an international endeavor and has since become an AI company of its own. The effort began when professor Luis Sentis approached professor of practice Greg Zwernemann, both of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, about entering the XPRIZE Wildfire Competition. The four-year, $11 million competition aims to incentivize the innovation of firefighting technologies to transform wildfire management approaches. One of the initial requirements of the competition was for each team to establish and operate as its own company. The company, born in a UT classroom, built with UT funding and at the hands of UT students, continues to reinvest in the very course that created it.