CRANE, Ind., Aug. 26 -- Naval Sea Systems Command issued the following news release:

Three Florida Institute of Technology students spent their summer at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division chasing a number: 34%. That's how much additional range their destroyer hull design needed to achieve, without modifying the ship's propulsion, by the end of the project. Brianna Ellis, Zoey Shepard and Collin Morr, rising seniors studying ocean engineering at Florida Tech, came to Carderock through the STEM Student Employment Program (SSEP) to do something rare for undergraduates: take a ship design developed during the academic year, build a physical model and test it in the David Taylor Model Basin. That broad challenge was intention...