Hurricane Katrina brought catastrophic damage to Mississippi and chaos to the Red Cross as it quickly tried to match volunteers where they were needed most.

"Thousands of people came in and wanted to volunteer, and we were trying to handle everything by pen and paper," said Thad McLaurin, an American Red Cross board member.

Millsaps seniors Adam Huffman and Jonathan Spencer found a way to eliminate pen and paper. They created a Web-based database system to manage volunteer information and build a server computer for the Red Cross to host and run the system.

"Our application will let people log in over the Internet and fill in their own information and let Red Cross administrators handle it whenever, wherever," said Spencer.

"They can just sit down and search and get a correct list of who would be willing to help at that time," said Huffman.

The students got involved when the Red Cross took over Millsaps computer labs after Hurricane Katrina to type out and print data on thousands of evacuees, shelters, and volunteers.

Immediately after the storm, the labs were filled with dozens of Red Cross volunteers, Millsaps students and faculty, spending countless hours inputting important information.

"I quickly realized they needed something to combine all the data together," said Dr. Don Schwartz of Millsaps' computer science department.

To create that, Schwartz, began a new class at Millsaps and recruited Huffman and Spencer to build the solution as part of their requirements to graduate.

Jackson's Red Cross chapter will share the new database system at the regional Red Cross conference in October.

"We'll make a presentation of this system and hopefully other chapters will pick it up and use it," said McLaurin.

It's a senior project that's getting use in the real world, and it should mean quicker response in the next disaster. The project is getting international attention as well. Students will present it to the Worldwide Software Engineering Conference.