July’s Software Developers Cartel meeting featured Ismail Hozain, an Engineering student and innovator from Texas A&M University. Ismail founded and established Starforge Foundry, the very first nonprofit makerspace in the BCS area for students. Starfarge provides students access to tools, guidance, and workspace so they can take their engineering talent to new heights, and bring their innovative ideas to life.
For the past year and a half, Starforge has provided a creative outlet for students to work on anything ranging from hobby-based projects to establishing venture-based startups. Presently, Starforge has been joined by 350 student members, all of whom are given access to machining, welding, Computer Numerical Control (CNC), 3D printers, an eLab, carpentry, and more. This kind of makerspace enables the genius of a new generation that has visions and passions that go above and beyond just the classrooms of Texas A&M. A wide range of gifted students have been able to visualize and build working projects in their own personalized style such as recreating a OneWheel that is typically only found in stores. Student-run organizations and competitive engineering teams have used the headquarters as well to create projects capable of competing at a national level. Ismail himself has been investigating vacuum-process castings, which he believes may be the future of rapid turnaround metal casting. Without the available space and tools provided by Starforge, these inventions and sparks of vision would have remained as blueprints on paper.
Ismail’s personal love for manufacturing and building has inspired his dreams of helping others do the same. He hopes for Starforge to become the next headquarters for developing and supporting Texas A&M engineering innovation which will aid the ability to build next generation technology at scale.
