Engineering students at Texas A&M are working on capstone projects that could help the cotton industry in the future.

Michael Buser is Professor and Endowed Chair in Cotton Engineering, Ginning and Mechanization at Texas A&M and he had two student teams who presented their projects at last week’s Beltwide Cotton Conferences.

“One is working on a feeder for a breeder gin stand. The other is developing a platform for crawling across cotton seed piles as an early detection for fire project,” said Buser.

“It is their final senior project. It’s supposed to take everything that they’ve learned over their 3 1/2 years of education and pull it all together. And they’re supposed to apply that to these projects. Our projects are 100% client-based, working with industry or government individuals on these projects.”

Buser says right now the teams are about halfway done with their projects. “So they’ve got recommended solutions that their clients have signed off on. So when we get back next week, starting January 12th, These young folks are going to start building these designs that they have. They’re going to do the fabrication, they’re going to go through, do the assembly, and then they’re going to do the testing and evaluation. They’ll take those results, determine how well those designs performed, and then they’re going to go through and do redesigns until they try to, until they come close to meeting the client needs.”

Learn more in this interview with Buser.
Michael Buser, Texas A&M - interview 5:32

2026 Beltwide Cotton Conferences Photo Album