Circumstance and chance play a huge role in invention and innovation. In the case of the Texas A&M University team behind Lazarus, ammunition that penetrates and neutralizes threats without loss of life, so much of the product’s early conceptualization was serendipitous.

Ben Omonira, a junior chemical engineering student and member of the Zachry Leadership Program, met Elise Hackney, mechanical engineering junior, outside of an elective engineering course they both arrived to early one day during their freshman year. They began discussing Omonira’s idea for a bullet that could help avoid situations like 2016 ambush and shooting on Dallas police officers, and the current obstacles they would face. Hackney enjoyed product design and CAD, and offered to help create a model. Fast forward two work-filled years of trial, error, improvement, competitions and the Engineering Incubator, and you have an incredible student-creation that is shooting to the top in its field.

Omonira is not your average student. He was born in the U.K., raised in Dallas, and he had this quirky commitment to writing down 10 ideas a day in his “book of bright ideas.” Not the easiest hobby, he’ll tell you, but it seems to have paid off with Lazarus.