Mt. Hebron Students Patent Invention Developed in HCPSS Engineering Course

September 30th, 2026

Mt. Hebron High School (MHHS) Career and Technical Education Teacher Michael Gorleski regularly encourages students who take his Engineering Design and Development (EDD) course to explore patenting the design/product they develop in class. Students don’t often take him up on that suggestion, but Hridik Singh, Tristan Quan Tran and Quinlan O’Niell did.

In May 2025, the three students, who have since graduated, filed a patent application for their design of a system to prevent injuries (“calf bites”) resulting from repetitive contact of a rower’s calves with a racing shell’s metal rails. Made of a rubber-like plastic using a 3-D printer, the system consists of a flexible, cushioning and water- and ultraviolet-resistant cap that attaches to the rails of a racing shell and helps to absorb impact as rowers move back and forth.

Singh, Tran, and O’Niell’s work on their system began in EDD in the fall of 2024, the capstone class for the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) engineering academy that is available in every HCPSS high school. As part of their coursework they were required to form a team, interview the community to identify a solvable problem, research the problem to ensure it hadn’t already been solved, create a problem statement, and draft a design brief stating what the problem was and why it required a solution. From there, they developed and tested a prototype, finalized their solution and presented it at the PLTW Expo in May 2025. Along the way, they presented their ideas to and solicited feedback from a panel of engineers.

Currently, Singh, Tran, and O’Niell’s patent is legally enforceable and undergoing peer review–a process that can take up to two years to complete.

Gorleski says he’s proud of how far the three students have come.

“It is very gratifying; it really brings home the point to me of how valuable our classes are. We have over 200 hundred graduates of our [PLTW] program (from Mt. Hebron alone) working in the engineering field and accomplishing amazing things. Many of them have obtained patents for innovations and inventions that they have made during their time in the field, but this is the first time a group has accomplished it (or at least started on the process) while still at Mt. Hebron — and what an amazing and invaluable item for them to add to their resumes as they graduate from college in a few years and are looking for their first engineering position!”