engineering capstone projects

99+ Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project Ideas

• Post author By admin
• February 13, 2024

Welcome to our helpful guide on Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project Ideas! As you reach the end of your mechanical engineering studies, you’re probably excited to start a project that shows what you’ve learned and how creative you can be.

We will explore many project ideas designed especially for mechanical engineering students like you.

In the mechanical engineering world, you can do tons of cool projects. Whether you like robots, renewable energy, planes, cars, or something else, we’ve gathered many fun ideas to get you thinking.

From designing new machines to improving existing ones, each idea is meant to challenge you and inspire you to think big

As you read through this blog, we aim to give you ideas and tips to help you start your project. Whether you’re working on a final-year assignment, trying to solve real problems, or just want to learn more about engineering, we have plenty of ideas and resources to help you. 

So, let’s dive in and discover the exciting world of Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project Ideas together.

Table of Contents

List of 100 Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project Ideas

Here’s a list of 100 Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project Ideas categorized into different types:

Renewable Energy

• Solar-powered vehicle design and prototyping
• Wind turbine optimization for efficiency
• Hydroelectric power generation system development
• Biomass energy conversion technology
• Geothermal heating and cooling system design

Automotive Engineering

•  Electric vehicle charging infrastructure development
• Autonomous vehicle navigation and control system
• Fuel-efficient engine design and optimization
• Vehicle aerodynamics enhancement for fuel economy
• Noise and vibration reduction in automotive systems

Aerospace Engineering

• Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design and testing
• Satellite propulsion system optimization
• Aircraft wing design for improved aerodynamics
• Spacecraft thermal protection system development
• Rocket engine performance analysis and enhancement

NOTE: “ 60+ Inspiring Capstone Project Ideas for STEM Students: Unlocking Excellence “

Manufacturing and Automation

•  Automated assembly line design and implementation
• Robotics for material handling and sorting
• CNC machine tool optimization for precision machining
• Additive manufacturing process optimization
• Quality control system development for manufacturing processes

Biomechanics and Medical Devices

•  Prosthetic limb design and development
• Wearable health monitoring device design
• Rehabilitation robotics for physical therapy
• Biomedical imaging technology enhancement
• Orthopedic implant materials optimization

Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

• Building energy management system development
• HVAC system optimization for energy efficiency
• Energy-efficient lighting system design
• Smart grid technology for renewable energy integration
• Waste heat recovery system design and implementation

Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer

•  Heat exchanger design and performance optimization
• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of airflow in HVAC systems
• Fluid flow control in piping systems
• Thermal management system design for electronic devices
• Turbomachinery design and performance analysis

Materials Science and Engineering

• Composite materials development for lightweight structures
• 3D printing of advanced materials for aerospace applications
• Nanomaterials for energy storage and conversion
• Corrosion-resistant coatings development
• Biomaterials for medical implants and devices

Control Systems and Robotics

• Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigation and control
• Swarm robotics for cooperative tasks
• Control system design for industrial automation
• Robotic exoskeleton for rehabilitation and assistance
• Adaptive control algorithms for dynamic systems

NOTE: “ 90+ Inspiring Capstone Project Ideas For Civil Engineering: Building Dreams “

Structural Engineering

•  Seismic retrofitting of existing structures
• Structural health monitoring system development
• Lightweight structural materials for transportation applications
• Bridge design and analysis for resilience and sustainability
• Finite element analysis (FEA) of complex structures

Environmental Engineering

•  Water purification system design and optimization
• Air pollution control technology development
• Waste management and recycling process optimization
• Green building design and certification
• Sustainable urban infrastructure planning and design

Fluid Power Systems

•  Hydraulic system design for heavy machinery
• Pneumatic actuator optimization for automation applications
• Fluid power energy recovery systems
• Electrohydraulic servo systems for precise control
• Fluid power system fault diagnosis and troubleshooting

Thermal Systems Engineering

• Solar thermal energy storage system design
• Combined heat and power (CHP) system optimization
• Thermal energy storage materials for renewable energy applications
• Refrigeration system design for cold chain logistics
• Waste heat utilization in industrial processes

Instrumentation and Measurement

•  Sensor development for environmental monitoring
• Instrumentation system design for aerospace testing
• Non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques for materials inspection
• Data acquisition and analysis system for performance testing
• Calibration system development for precision instruments

Machine Design and Analysis

•  Gearbox design and optimization for efficiency and reliability
• Bearing system analysis and improvement for rotating machinery
• Linkage mechanism design for robotic applications
• Vibration analysis and mitigation in mechanical systems
• Kinematic analysis of complex mechanical assemblies

Electromechanical Systems

•  Electromagnetic energy harvesting device development
• Electric motor design and optimization
• Piezoelectric energy harvesting system for renewable energy
• Electromechanical actuator design for aerospace applications
• Electromechanical braking system for automotive safety

Human Factors Engineering

•  Ergonomic design of workplace environments
• Human-robot interaction studies for collaborative robotics
• User interface design for medical devices and equipment
• Safety system design for hazardous environments
• Cognitive workload analysis in complex human-machine systems

Transportation Engineering

•  Traffic flow simulation and optimization for urban planning
• Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) for traffic management
• Railway track design and maintenance optimization
• Air traffic management system optimization
• Autonomous cargo delivery system design for logistics

Robotics and Automation Systems

• Robotic manipulator design and control for industrial applications
• Autonomous agricultural robot for precision farming
• Swarm robotics for search and rescue missions
• Soft robotics for delicate object manipulation
• Humanoid robot design for human-robot interaction studies

Renewable Energy Systems

• Wave energy converter design and testing
• Tidal turbine optimization for marine energy extraction
• Biomass gasification system for renewable power generation
• Solar tracking system design for maximum energy capture
• Hybrid renewable energy system integration for off-grid applications

These project ideas include many different topics and uses in mechanical engineering. They give students many chances to explore and develop new ideas for their capstone projects.

Why Choose a Good Capstone Project Idea?

Choosing a good capstone project idea is crucial for several reasons.

Real-world relevance

A good capstone project idea allows students to work on real-world problems or challenges faced by industries or communities. This experience helps bridge the gap between academic knowledge and practical application, preparing students for future careers.

Skill enhancement

Engaging in a meaningful project allows students to apply and enhance the knowledge and skills they acquire throughout their academic journey. It will enable them to gain hands-on experience in problem-solving, critical thinking, project management, and teamwork.

Career Preparation

A well-chosen capstone project can significantly enhance a student’s portfolio and resume. Completing a project demonstrating practical skills and innovative thinking can impress potential employers and give students a competitive edge in the job market.

Personal interest and motivation

Students are more likely to be motivated and engaged When they work on a project that aligns with their interests and passions. This intrinsic motivation often leads to higher-quality work and a more fulfilling learning experience.

Networking opportunities

Capstone projects often mean working with people from companies, mentors, or classmates. Doing a project that matters gives students chances to make connections with others. These connections can help them in their future jobs.

In summary, choosing a good capstone project idea is essential because it provides students real-world experience, enhances their skills, prepares them for their careers, keeps them motivated, and offers networking opportunities.

Things to Think About When Choosing a Capstone Project Idea

Several factors should be considered when choosing a capstone project idea to ensure its success and effectiveness.

Personal Interest

Choose a project that you like and care about. Working on something you’re genuinely interested in will keep you excited and focused during the project.

Feasibility

Consider whether you can do the project considering time, what you need, and what you already know. Pick a project you can complete within your school’s requirements and time.

Evaluate the potential impact of the project. Aim to work on projects that have the potential to make a meaningful contribution to your field of study, industry, or community.

Resources Available

Assess available resources, including equipment, facilities, mentorship, and funding. Choose a project that can be effectively supported with the available resources.

Alignment with Career Goals

Think about how the project fits with what you want to achieve. Pick a project that helps you learn useful things for the job you want later on.

Interdisciplinary Opportunities

Explore opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Consider projects integrating knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines, providing a broader and more holistic learning experience .

Support and Mentorship

Seek out projects that offer support and mentorship from faculty members, industry professionals, or other experts. Having guidance throughout the project can help you navigate challenges and achieve success.

Innovation and Creativity

Look for projects that encourage innovation and creativity. Choose ideas that allow you to explore new concepts, technologies, or approaches within your field.

By considering these factors when choosing a capstone project idea, you can select a personally rewarding and academically valuable project.

Final Thoughts

Lastly, selecting a mechanical engineering capstone project idea is pivotal for a student’s academic and professional growth. A well-chosen project provides a platform to apply theoretical knowledge and fosters critical problem-solving, innovation, and collaboration skills.

By carefully considering factors like personal interest, feasibility, and potential impact, students can embark on projects that align with their career aspirations and contribute meaningfully to their field. 

Students can unleash their creativity and make significant strides in mechanical engineering through dedication, perseverance, and guidance from mentors.

As students delve into their capstone projects, they are urged to embrace the challenges, seek mentors’ support, and effectively leverage available resources.

This journey marks a pivotal moment in their academic journey, preparing them to transition into the workforce as competent, innovative professionals ready to tackle tomorrow’s engineering challenges.

What is a capstone project in mechanical engineering?

A capstone project in mechanical engineering is a culminating academic experience where students work on a significant project that integrates their knowledge and skills acquired throughout their degree program. It typically involves solving real-world engineering problems or developing innovative solutions.

Why are capstone projects important in mechanical engineering?

Capstone projects matter in mechanical engineering because they let students use what they’ve learned in real-life situations. They also help students learn important skills like solving problems, thinking critically, managing projects, and working in teams, which are useful for future jobs.

How do I choose a good capstone project idea?

When choosing a capstone project idea, consider factors such as your interests, feasibility, potential impact, alignment with career goals, available resources, and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Select a realistic, achievable project that allows you to develop skills relevant to your desired career path.

What are some examples of mechanical engineering capstone project ideas?

Examples of mechanical engineering capstone project ideas include designing and fabricating an autonomous vehicle, developing a renewable energy system, optimizing manufacturing processes, designing a prosthetic limb, and simulating fluid dynamics in a turbocharged engine.

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Industry & alumni

Industry capstone program.

Benefits to sponsors How it works What makes a good proposal? Sample timeline

The Industry Capstone Program brings together UW students and professionals to tackle real-world, interdisciplinary engineering problems. Sponsors bring in projects from their organizations and provide support to teams of creative, talented engineering students who will design and build innovative solutions.

Work with us to develop the next generation of engineering leaders!

Help shape the future of engineering while also gaining new insights and fresh perspectives for your organization. 

View capstone projects Submit a project proposal

Benefits to sponsors

Meaningful engagement.

Customized opportunities to assess student talent and recruit for jobs

Creative problem-solving

Low-cost opportunity for a fresh look at a problem

Professional development

Opportunity for technical mentor to practice and apply leadership skills

Brand recognition

Boost public awareness of your organization through student engagement

UW partnerships

Build impactful connections within the UW College of Engineering

Commercial licenses

Non-exclusive commercial license to any IP developed through project

How it works

  innovation.

Potential sponsors propose a project for review by College of Engineering faculty

  Sponsorship

Organizations commit financially to cover project costs and program fee

  Team matching

Students are matched to an approved project and faculty mentor

  Mentorship

Technical mentor meets with the team weekly for project duration (January – June)

  Problem-solving

Teams embark on a full-scale design process with help from technical and faculty mentors

What makes a good proposal?

• Scoped for a small team of students, with design and performance criteria requiring appropriate analytical study on a topic directly relevant to engineering
• Contains both a design and results phase, culminating in a specific project outcome
• Reflects lower-priority real-world problems faced by your organization; mission-critical problems are not appropriate projects
• Appropriate for entry-level engineers in their first or second year on the job
• Primarily self-contained, but also integrates within a larger context

We strongly encourage projects that are open to all UW Engineering students, regardless of citizenship.

Department-based capstone programs

• Aeronautics & Astronautics
• Bioengineering
• Chemical Engineering
• Civil & Environmental Engineering
• Computer Science & Engineering
• Electrical & Computer Engineering
• Human Centered Design & Engineering
• Industrial & Systems Engineering
• Materials Science & Engineering  
• Mechanical Engineering

Sample timeline

Early september, project proposal due.

Submit a two-page document outlining pertinent details of your project. This document serves as a starting point for collaboration with College of Engineering departments.

Late October

Project proposal presentations.

Approved proposals are presented, showcasing information about project requirements and scope. This information is used to determine student compatibility and team composition.

Early December

Mentor orientation and team kickoff.

Sponsors are provided with a departmental program overview. Student teams are matched and announced, and may connect to sponsors prior to the start of the project. 

January - June

Projects in progress.

Weekly team meetings take place between the student teams and mentors as project design and build processes develop throughout the winter and spring quarters.

FINAL CAPSTONE SHOWCASE

The capstone program culminates in events where student teams present their projects, explain their work, answer questions, and demonstrate working prototypes.

Latest news

Developing a synthetic railbelt power system model.

A team of electrical and chemical engineering graduate students on a capstone project focused on developing a synthetic power system model of Alaska’s Railbelt transmission system.

Third annual Boeing capstone

Students earned their wings during a spring quarter capstone project undertaken in partnership with Boeing. Fittingly, they worked on a novel design for a wingtip end cap that was produced using 3D printing.

Students design a rover to help fish

As part of an industry capstone project, engineering students created a rover to inspect sewer pipes and culverts for damage that may prevent fish migration.

ISE’s capstones adjust to the pandemic

As ISE’s capstones adjusted to pandemic life, the Millipore Sigma team shows us how they prototyped from home.

The Young Engineers Guide To University Capstone Projects

Engineering degrees are as wide and varied as the potential careers on offer out in the real world. There’s plenty of maths to learn, and a cavalcade of tough topics, from thermodynamics to fluid mechanics. However, the real challenge is the  capstone project. Generally taking place in the senior year of a four-year degree, it’s a chance for students to apply everything they’ve learned on a real-world engineering project.

Known for endless late nights and the gruelling effort required, it’s an challenge that is revered beforehand, and boasted about after the fact. During the project, everyone is usually far too busy to talk about it. My experience was very much along these lines, when I undertook the Submarine That Can Fly project back in 2012.  The project taught me a lot about engineering, in a way that solving problems out of textbooks never could. What follows are some of the lessons I picked up along the way.

It’s A Team Game

Engineering is a team sport, and a big capstone project will drill this into you quickly. The bigger the project, the larger the team, and it’s important to learn how to work in such an environment in order to succeed. I led a team of seven other budding engineers, who aimed to design, build and test a flying submersible vehicle in just under twelve months.

In that team, there were a mixture of personalities, skills and cultures. Keeping this in mind is key to getting the best out of your people. There’s little to be gained by demanding your orthodox Jewish team mate show up to work on Saturday morning, just as it makes little sense to put your fluid mechanics expert on to dreary stress analysis problems. A happy team is a productive team, and it generally makes sense to play to your strengths where possible. Understanding your team is key if your project is to be a pleasant experience, or a disaster.

We were lucky to have a broad spectrum of abilities across the team. One member stepped up to manage the team’s documentation, becoming a pro at LaTeX. Another put his modelling abilities to work on the CAD side of things, while another ran the stability calculations to ensure we’d have a working aircraft at the end of the day.

Obviously, it was important for all team members to have an idea of the greater scope of the project, but allowing team members to find their niche helped everyone buy in to the greater whole. Sometimes, difficult decisions had to be made, and there will always be work that nobody wants to do. But by sharing tasks carefully and with everyone contributing to the best of their abilities, we were able to achieve more as a team.

Get this right, and you’ll have a less stressful project, and finish with a group of lifelong friends. Get this wrong, and you’ll get destroyed in the peer assessment and never want to talk to your team again. You’ll be spending a whole year in the trenches together, so make sure you choose the right people!

You’re Gonna Have A Lot Of Meetings

Unfortunately, when you’re working with other people, you’re gonna have to have meetings to keep everyone abreast of developments. This goes for team members, as well as outside stakeholders such as sponsors or project supervisors. If managed poorly, these meetings can become excessively long and tiresome, so it’s important to stay on top of things.

Agendas should be short, sharp, and shiny – and provided in advance. It’s a massive waste of time if you’ve called a meeting and nobody has brought the necessary materials because you didn’t make it clear beforehand. It’s likely your project supervisor is a professor who is busy with all manner of other things, and won’t tolerate such mistakes, so don’t make them in the first place.

It’s also important to keep discussions on topic. Don’t spend 40 minutes discussing the relative merits of fiberglass versus carbon fiber when you haven’t even decided on a basic layout for your vehicle, as an example. These things happen quite naturally, but it’s important to pull the conversation back to the key agenda topics if you’re going to get out of the room before sundown.

Finally, it pays to learn when you’re communicating effectively. If you’re raising your voice or stating the same thing over and over again, and people still aren’t understanding you, it’s likely time to change tack. You may need to understand their position first, before beginning to explain your own. Also, drawing a diagram often helps. Or in my case, getting someone else to draw a diagram because your own skills are somewhat lacking – Thanks, Lara!

Making Stuff Is Hard

If you’re lucky, you’ll go to a university with a well-equipped machine shop. They’ll let you spend untold hours turning out parts, and you’ll graduate with a great appreciation of the machinist’s craft. We weren’t so lucky, and instead had to prepare drawings to have our parts produced by the university’s own machining staff. This in itself is a powerful learning experience, as it’s important to be able to create drawings to standard that can be properly interpreted by others.

Between the university’s workshop and our CNC machining sponsor, we learned from experienced operators what works and what doesn’t in a variety of machining methods. Sitting down in meetings with our production partners, we were able to learn from their decades of experience. We set about refining our parts to cut production costs to the bone, something we likely wouldn’t have thought to do had we been let loose ourselves on the tools. Learning from the pros about how to minimise set ups and avoid repetitive tool changes reduced our costs by a factor of ten.

There were also pitfalls along the way. Our composites knowledge was weak, and we were trying to do some things a little unconventionally. Combined with a miscommunication, our wings ended up twice as heavy as intended, significantly harming our flight performance. Capstone projects are strictly time-limited due to the constraints of the degree, and a small mistake such as this one proved difficult to remedy after the fact. It’s important to stay sharp and detail oriented, from start to finish.

Don’t Forget About Presentation

A significant part of a capstone project is documenting and presenting the project. The reality is, many capstone projects fail to achieve all of the lofty goals they set out to reach at the start of the year. Ours was no exception – our flying submarine did become airborne, but failed to achieve a submersible mission before deadline. Despite this, the true purpose of the capstone project is to learn – and our documentation and presentations reflected this.

We were able to discuss the stability criteria and structural requirements for a fixed-wing submersible vehicle. Our testing regime had highlighted the viability of using a single ducted thruster for both air and underwater propulsion. We’d also learned how to build effective thrust testing rigs, as well as unconventional wing structures with some success. In this regard, we had a lot to show for our work, and many other teams were in the same position.

By producing clear documentation of our work, and presenting our final seminar with clarity and focus, we were able to communicate to the audience and markers the value of our project. This in turn led to us achieving solid grades, which is what we were all there for in the first place!

In summary…

If you’re approaching your capstone project, a little prep work done early can go a long way. Find a project you’re passionate about, and assemble a team of students with the right attitude and skills to get the job done. Prepare yourself for the inevitable mistakes along the way, and soak up as much knowledge as you can from the people who are there to help you. Your capstone project can be a great stepping stone towards your eventual career , so it pays to get it right. Good luck with your studies, and if you’re doing something really great, you may just want to let us know!

Read more from this series: Young Engineer's Guide

8 thoughts on “ the young engineers guide to university capstone projects ”.

Would that I could have chosen my project. Our Capstone projects were assigned, and unfortunately I was assigned to a project that frankly didn’t contain much to interest me, as it had nothing to do with my engineering concentration, (predominantly a mechanical/industrial project), and was sponsored by a company that decided to kill the project some time during our second semester without telling us.

I spent one of the longest amd most frustrating years of my life trying to be useful as an electrical engineer on a project that legitimately only needed an electrical engineer for just about a single day of work. My entire contribution from the electrical side was sizing an AC motor, the correct wire gauge, and the very rudimentary ladder logic needed to run it from a foot pedal and incorporating an end stop. It took me about 30 mins it, and about 3 times that to write up and diagram. To make matters worse, someone felt that these moderate tasks needed not one EEs, but rather two! I did what I could to help in other areas, but mostly I was relegated to documentation and administrative tasks. I wish I had fond memories of Capstone, but frankly I feel like it was a huge waste of time and money.

Oh man, that is terrible! I can’t imagine who thinks assigning capstone projects is a good idea. Sorry you had to go through that bud, I agree, waste of time and money.

One thing I’d note is that every university is different when it comes to these types of projects. We were teams of two or three, corporate sponsorship were not common, and projects focused on functionality, not fluff (presentations). IMO, you are going to school to be an engineer, not a marketing person, graphic designer, manager, or a sales person. Why is so much emphasis put on those things at some universities? If they want custom graphics, flashy presentations, and structured management, why doesn’t the university get the relevant schools involved in the project?! I mean, a lot of engineers dabble in other ‘arts’ like graphic design and project management, but that isn’t what you are paying the university for. Just seems silly.

I loved my project. I was already working so I didn’t spend as much time as I should have on it, but it worked!

The presentation portion of a capstone project isn’t about marketing, it’s about communicating what was accomplished and how the technology works. This is a critical part of the engineering process. It doesn’t have to be flashy and marketing like, but it does need to be clear and concise; achieving both is an invaluable skill to a competent engineer. I can’t tell you how many engineers I’ve worked that didn’t have this skill and how hard it’s been to communicate with them. Ultimately just about all had their careers severely limited by this deficiency.

Just about everything in this article relates directly to work where I am juggling about 6 -10 projects at a time. While I haven’t done a capstone project, I would certainly consider a technical capstone project on a resume as prep for life in IT.

Fort Hays State University has a capstone class for IT (information networking and telecom) bachelor of science students. I don’t know what it entails (I didn’t do the BS program, only the MS), and I can’t find a concise description of the class, but it seems appropriate for perspective future administrators and analysts.

Different universities and countries have slightly different systems obviously.

Here in the UK they’re just called a final year project – and they aren’t necessarily team based. I did a solo project for mine. Anyway – I think there’s a couple of things you can add to this list that are worth bearing in mind (I think!). Obviously these are based around having some choice over your final year project.

1: Choose something that interests you :

Its a lot of work and you’ll be driving yourself – that’s much, much harder if you’re not interested. You’ll naturally put more work in and do better if you care about the project. A good project, that you’re interested in doesn’t just serve you well at uni, but in your first job interviews you’ll have something to talk about. Something you can talk about animatedly, will take you a long way.

2 : Make sure there’s different types of skills involved :

Couple of reasons for this. It allows you to demonstrate an understanding of how different “tools” interact and apply more of what you’ve learned. It also reduces your exposure to failure. So rather than a project that solely focuses on say, FEA or a build and test of something, choose one that involves some simpler FEA and a build and test. If one element of your project is unsuccessful then you’ll still have plenty to talk about.

3 : Don’t over-reach :

It’s easy to get sucked in at the beginning into dreaming up a project that you’ll struggle to deliver. Understand what you need to reach a minimum viable result. It’s better to do something more modest and do it really well than try and try to deliver the moon on a stick – and end up with a stick. The best thing would be something that you can scale up or down depending on . There’s a lot going on in you’re final year – be kind to yourself.

4. There’s a good story in failure as well as success :

“The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft astray” or “shit happens”. If stuff doesn’t work out how you’d planned – fail well. Test results give you a different answer than you were expecting – concentrate on showing how your original assumptions have been challenged by reality.

Thanks for the bit about being cool with Orthodox Jews and Sabbath. I am one and I have had my troubles with university group partners and employers. We can be the best(or worst we are human) part for the job but I greatly appreciate working with people who can treat my day off and what I can/can’t eat etc as a fact on a datasheet rather than passive aggression or openly begging I break my rules. I do not exclusively exist for a team or an employer and a day away form your topic a week and some other rules are part of getting me or others of my tribe who don’t roll on shabbos to work with you, these rules probably also contribute to better mental health as we do take time away from work to have family or at least away time.

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Students get hands-on experience working on site layout and structural designs.

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Outstanding capstone project awards.

The department congratulates the following student teams for presenting the best two-semester Senior Design Projects in their academic year.  The project consists of two parts: 1) Site layout and 2) Structural design.

The first assignment is to perform complete site layout design for a suburban building complex that includes all buildings, grading, drainage, stormwater management, structures, sanitary sewers, water supply networks, parking, driveways, recreational areas, erosion and sediment control, vegetated areas, traffic studies, pavement design, road design including road profiles and signage.  The site plan submittal must meet basic code requirements.  

The second assignment is to produce a detailed structural design that meets all the building code requirements. Additionally, the structural design typically involves analysis and design of retaining wall systems.   

The deliverables for the project consist a full set of site drawings, structural and architectural drawings along with a detailed calculation report. Students present and defend their design in an oral presentation.

The department encourages students to review the attached project documents which serve as a good example of the level of work expected upon graduation.  

2023 Senior Design Projects

Course: CE-UY 4813 Structural Engineering Capstone

Project team:

• Charlotte Adelson
• Levi Khaimov

Project Material:

• View Project Report
• View Project Drawing Set

Course: CE-UY 4853 Construction Management Capstone

• Michelle Cardona
• Adarsha Paul
• View Project Presentation

2022 Senior Design Projects

• Adiba Miazi
• Lin Lin Jin

Course: CE-UY 4803 Civil Engineering Capstone

• Shakya Amaratunga
• Nicholas Hudanich
• Michael Osorio
• Joanna Mira-Villa

Course: CE-UY 4863 Environmental Engineering Capstone

• Amanda Chen
• Cheyenne Goddard
• Michelle Ren
• Sadhvi Surendhran
• View Project Report (Exec Summary)

Course: CE-UY 4833 / TR-GY 6403 Transportation Engineering Capstone

2021 Senior Design Projects

• Elliot Molina
• Lin Lin JIn

• Purnima Prasad
• Siva Sooryaa Muruga Thambiran

2020 Senior Design Projects

Course: CE-UY 4863 - Environmental Engineering Capstone

• Eva Rosales
• Miral Shaker

Course: CE-UY 4803 - Civil Engineering Capstone

Zobee Ali Nicolle Intriago Maryam Ahmed

2019 Senior Design Project

Project Team: Caroline Hwang Chris Katsanos

• View project (Part 1)
• View project (Part 3)

2018 Senior Design Projects

Mari Kobakhidze Bryan Kwiatkowski Carlos Pena Kevin Tapia

• View project drawings
• View project calculations
• View project presentation

Project team: 

Cameron Haas

2017 Senior Design Projects

Johnny Wong Mohammed Haque Victor He Judy Lee

• View project drawings (part 1)
• View project drawings (part 2)

Johnny Wong Mateusz Chrobak Mohammed Haque

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2016 Senior Design Projects

Julia Langewis Anthony Fitzgerald Osvaldo Zeqo Tyler Albert

Mohammad Mualla Xin Tao Liao Carlos Peralta Justim Hum

2015 Senior Design Project

Project Team: Leifu Wang Jimmy Liang Mark Milkis

2014 Senior Design Project

Project Team: Demetrio Criscuolo Sojol Howlader Ashley Kemraj Megan Moran Evan Wilke Pajtim Ziba

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Capstone Senior Design (Capstone) is the final required course for the Bachelor’s degree; it provides the opportunity for students to integrate their curricular and experiential journeys into a multi-semester team project with a real-world outcome.

The Capstone experience applies the engineering sciences and other knowledge domains to the design of a system, component, product, process, and/or set of research inquiries. The Capstone projects reflect current, practical, and relevant industrial and mechanical engineering design projects or may involve a combination of both disciplines. Students bid for or develop their team’s particular design project with the approval of appropriate faculty.  In the project assignment process, design teams are self-formed, or configured of students with similar interest areas. Each project includes the use of open-ended problems, development and application of research and design methodologies, formulation of design problem statements and specifications, generation and consideration of alternative solutions, along with safety, usability and feasibility considerations, and detailed system descriptions. It also includes realistic constraints such as economic factors, sustainability, along with global and social impact, to name a few.  Throughout the Capstone experience, students are also challenged to think and act as a ‘team’ and to consider how notions of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging affect their decisions, actions, and results.

Capstone projects are often sponsored by outside clients, including early-stage ventures arising from NU’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.  Sometimes, ambitious student-proposed technical ideas can (and have) become startup ventures themselves.

Sponsor a Project

The breadth of engineering challenges, both ME and IE, reflect the diversity of the project sponsors. Our sponsors, both corporate and non-profits, range from the aerospace industry to biomedical and regional hospitals. Department faculty sponsor projects for related to their research interests and for custom equipment for their research labs and, increasingly, students enter the program bringing their own sophisticated projects.

In many respects, our project sponsors are the life blood of the program. They bring current real world problems to the students and expect real solutions. Sponsors want to know the patent searches will be done and that intellectual property rights have been considered and protected.

The project sponsors must provide a contact person and are expected to provide timely feedback and interactions. The project should include a prototype deliverable or implemented solution. A “not for work” grant to be negotiated and expensive required items for the prototype are requested from the sponsor. Northeastern will provide computer simulation and basic machining processes. It is usually for the corporate sponsor and Capstone Design Coordinator to discuss and negotiate the details of this arrangement. Protection of the sponsor’s intellectual property is a major concern throughout this process.

At the beginning of the two semester sequence, the students self-assemble into groups and, after reviewing project descriptions, indicate their preferences. The preferences are used to assign the projects. Once projects are assigned, the students meet with their faculty advisor weekly and with representatives of the sponsor, through onsite visits, Skype or teleconferences, on a basis determined by the sponsor. The evaluation and reporting processes are tightly structured. The program culminates with a day long series of public presentations judged by a panel of our alumni.

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Mechanical Engineering Capstone

.cls-1{fill:#a91e22;}.cls-2{fill:#c2c2c2;} double-arrow mechanical engineering capstone sequence.

The Capstone Sequence is the primary culminating project of the mechanical engineering curriculum. Students carry out a formal design experience that takes you from design requirements to idea/design generation and on through prototyping and testing. The sequence is intended to provide experience in the design process and bring together and reinforce skills obtained in the analysis, modeling and measurement of engineering systems. Students also continue to refine communication and teamwork skills and be introduced to concepts in project management that will be utilized to successfully complete the capstone projects. The courses also touch on other important aspects of real-world engineering practice.

Students must complete the following prerequisites prior to beginning any capstone sequence: MECHENG 3360, MECHENG 3671, and MECHENG 3870. Students are also required to enroll in the co-requisite MECHENG 4510 in the same term as capstone. These prerequisites will be  strictly enforced  and exceptions will not be made. All students are also required to complete MECHENG 4870 (Multidisciplinary Mechanical Engineering Laboratory) regardless of the capstone option chosen.

General Capstone Presentation  (Prof. Marzette)

In the general capstone, students are able to participate in a diversity of projects including community and industry projects, instructor-suggested projects, and student conceived projects. Projects options may touch upon any fundamental area of mechanical engineering, and while some may be purely mechanical, others may involve mechatronics or other interdisciplinary work, topically speaking.

There are opportunities to partner with subject-matter experts external to the department who are interested in supporting student projects. Recent projects include an automated lawnmower, a robotic fish, a cookie extruder, a drone constraint device, and a mechanical regeneratively brake bike. 

Students can begin the General Capstone Sequence in the Autumn or Spring semesters. 

Student Design Competition Presentation

Students work on design projects arising from various student team competitions in engineering. The emphasis will be on automotive projects similar to Baja SAE, EcoCAR2, Buckeye Electric Motorcycle and Buckeye Bullet, among others. Note that these projects are tightly formulated to aid student teams in the design and manufacturing of specific components or systems for the vehicles. Some examples include advanced braking systems, high-performance composite structures and the creation of real-time vehicle telemetry. Student teams also document their designs so a record can be created for the various vehicle systems. Permission from the instructor is required to be enrolled in this capstone sequence.

Students can only begin the Student Design Competition Capstone Sequence in the Autumn semester. 

Product Design Presentation

Students will work in teams of three to four students for the entire two–semester sequence, where students are responsible for taking a product idea from the initial conceptualization stage to a functional prototype. The emphasis of this course is on product design, as compared to engineering design, and include lectures on the background and theory of user-centered product development, product architecture, and manufacturing. Students will be expected to complete extensive fieldwork and design research before beginning the project. Additionally, students will build several prototypes over the course of this two–semester sequence. Recent projects include a hose management system for firefighters, an enrichment device for Asian Elephants at the Cincinnati Zoo, and a rainwater collection system for urban farms. 

Permission from the instructor is required to be enrolled in this capstone sequence.  MECHENG 5682.01 is a pre- or co-requisite for the first semester of this capstone.

Assistive Devices Presentation  (OLD)  

Assistive Devices capstone is currently not being offered for the 2023-2024 school year. We hope to be able to run this capstone option - please keep an eye on your email if this is posted to the course schedule for Autumn 2023.

Students will create assistive devices for people with disabilities. These devices will aid in the quality of life for many types of disabilities. These projects emphasize working with the customer and understanding the specific needs and wants of a variety of patients. Project teams of three to five students will be presented with an unmet need for an assistive device or technology, and will work through the entire product design process over the two-course sequence. This project will also be completed in collaboration with senior capstone students from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Project teams will have faculty mentors from both the College of Engineering and the College of Medicine.  The project will culminate with the creation of working prototypes that will be tested and used in a clinical setting.

Students can only begin the Assistive Devices Capstone Sequence in the Autumn semester. 

Multidisciplinary Design Presentation

This capstone sequence is designed to prepare students with the engineering and professional skills and techniques needed to complete a real-world project using a design process. Students will learn a multidisciplinary design process, which includes defining the problem; conceptualizing solutions; designing a solution; building or modeling a prototype; and creating and implementing a validation plan.  Students will demonstrate technical communication skills and professional practices in a multidisciplinary environment. Students will also learn project management and teamwork skills.

Teams of students (typically four to six students) from various engineering programs (i.e. CBE, CSE, ECE, Engineering Physics, FABE, ISE, etc.) and other disciplines (i.e. Business, Chemistry, Finance, Industrial Design, Psychology, etc.) work on these real-world projects, which represent those that might be encountered upon graduation and entering a professional working environment. The project topics range from product and process improvement to new product development, humanitarian and socially innovative product design. A faculty or staff advisor is assigned to each team and each sponsor supplies a liaison for the entire length of the project. Additional information can be found  here .  Permission from the instructor is required to be enrolled in this capstone sequence. Students can only begin the Multidisciplinary Design Capstone Sequence in the Autumn semester. 

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Are you a member of the community and have a project idea? Looking to partner? Tell us about it here:  https://go.osu.edu/MAECapstoneSurvey .

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What Is a Capstone Project in Engineering?

For Faculty Lecturer Alyssa McCluskey , the capstone project at the University of Colorado’s Engineering Management Program (EMP) boils down to two things: agency and opportunity. 

Agency, because students can chart their own course. And opportunity, arising from that agency, allows students to become leaders on their own or within their organizations. McCluskey ought to know: Capstone worked for her as a student and she knew, eventually, it could work for others as well.

“In my civil engineering capstone, we could explore and create different solutions to the use of biosolids, and I was really proud of the report and presentation that we produced,” McCluskey says. “I did send the report to my future employer, a research institute in Boston, and was hired partially based on the document that I had sent them. And I just remember really enjoying the process. So I wanted to bring that to this Program as something to offer the students.

What Is a Capstone Project?

In the Engineering Management Program, students can now elect to cap off their engineering curriculum with a capstone project. The project can be anything that uses their management and engineering skills to make a product, design software or find innovative ways to affect change within their industry.

In the past, students were given a list of topics to write an 8-10 page paper using concepts learned throughout the program to culminate their degree. McCluskey found that the traditional method was serving neither students nor faculty well. This method seemed like just regurgitating material and lacked a meaningful experience for students to use what they learned throughout the degree.

Looking for more flexible options for CU students, the EMP decided to offer two paths for degree completion: completing the full coursework, 30 credit hours, or taking 27 credit hours of coursework and completing a final 3-credit capstone project in their final semester. 

“We made the capstone flexible so students can explore any ideas or topics of interest,” McCluskey says. “Anything from hot topics in project management to anything they found interesting over their courses in the EMP. I encourage them to look at courses they really enjoyed, talk with professors they enjoyed learning from, meet with professionals working in areas they are interested in and think of topics around that.”

A Diverse Range of Capstone Project Ideas

EMP just launched this program and there are four students in the first cohort, each working on a unique capstone project. All of them are focused on finding practical solutions to real-world problems.

One student’s capstone is about finding effective methods and tactics to increase employee engagement within the Office of Information Technology (OIT).

“This is a student who’s employed at OIT at CU,” McCluskey says. “And so she was asking how do we retain our employees and make them happy and want to stay? She found some startling statistics that close to 50% of employees are thinking of leaving.”

This capstone is especially topical given the nature of the Great Resignation where many employees are seeking better opportunities and are no longer willing to settle for the status quo.

“She did a number of surveys, listened to podcasts, took some courses and came up with a plan that she’s trying to implement within her department based on the capstone she worked on,” McCluskey adds. 

Another fascinating engineering capstone project idea was one student’s mission to make a more sustainable satellite, combining interests in both sustainability and the aerospace industry. 

“They developed a tool to quantify the environmental impacts of producing, launching and disposing of a satellite,” McCluskey says. After inputting the information into a spreadsheet, it comes out with “the carbon footprint of what the satellite would produce. And not only that but also ranking which areas you should spend your [resources] and get the most bang for the buck that’s most probably going to reduce your carbon footprint,” McCluskey says.

Given the concerns about orbital “space junk,” this capstone project addresses a need in aerospace that could be all the more germane as technology allows us to explore beyond our own planet.

And for the person on the move  whose arms are constantly full and trying to literally—and figuratively—juggle the messiness of life, one student came to the capstone project with an idea already in hand: “merge bottle technology”—magnetized stacking water bottles that allow you to carry different beverages or food in one place, even at different temperatures.

“What I saw was great,” McCluskey says. “As a parent, you’re having to carry all these things, right? Also, he found that people in the healthcare industry and first responders who might be on a shift for a long time were interested right away. You can keep something hot, you can keep something cold, you could put food in one and drinks in another. Teachers as well. They have all these bags and bunches of containers they carry around. So instead of having multiple water bottles for your coffee and your water, you could just carry one stack.”

Yet another capstone project focuses on the uncertainties inherent in software product development and how that uncertainty affects humans at the neurobiological level. 

“This student is in the software product management field, so she studied how we can better support employees to deal with uncertainty,” McCluskey says, “and she came up with four main things that companies can do to help their employees deal with that.”

The capstone project identified four key strategic theories—frequent stakeholder communication, a transparent roadmap with dependencies, iterative feedback opportunities and integration and focus on analytics—that empower product managers to ameliorate uncertainty among stakeholders during the software development process. 

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that students focus their capstone project not on abstract concepts, but on tangible strategies that have the potential for immediate real-world application. As a result, these capstone projects can help a student stand out as a desirable employee and a potential leader in their field or company.

Communication and Research: Soft Skills for Engineers that Pay Dividends

Many people—even many experts— know their field and products inside and out but struggle with communicating their ideas and knowledge to key audiences within their company or to clients. To help develop these skills, part of the capstone project incorporates a communication course. 

“This involves working on your writing, working on your presentation skills, and working on peer reviews,” McCluskey says. 

Good communication also means translating sometimes complex ideas and knowledge into a “language” that a wide audience can understand. That’s a skill that students refine over the course of their projects. 

“You may understand something so well that you’re using acronyms others don’t know and you just lose the reader right away,” McCluskey says. “So that’s something we spend some time on. What’s nice is that we switch throughout the semester with our peers as well as the instructors and advisors so that if anybody is unfamiliar with something, it’s highlighted.”

Another benefit of the capstone project is that it allows students to stretch and improve their research skills beyond the usual Google search. Rachel Knapp, assistant professor and applied sciences librarian at CU, spoke to the capstone cohort and went over online resources available to CU students via OneSearch and discussed best practices in research strategies—for instance, how to narrow a topic and get the best out of information searches and how to determine which journals you may want to publish in. If capstone students get “stuck” in their research or are not getting the results hoped for, they can set up an appointment with a CU librarian to help with ideas and options. 

Armed with this information, the capstone gives the students a chance to put into action much of what they’ve learned during the EMP and presents a valuable opportunity to live out what being an engineering manager is all about.

“They come in and they are the project manager of their capstones, ” McCluskey says. “So they get a chance to implement all the things you can think of that go into that: time management, building out your product schedule, problem-solving skills, thinking ahead, identifying what you might run into that’s going to cause a problem. They start to build their confidence because they’re now experts on this topic.”

Taking on a project of this nature flexes many skills including writing and planning, constructively giving peer feedback, and setting and achieving goals—while also making a student an attractive hire or a more effective contributor in their current position.

“The student who created the toolbox for the sustainable satellite,” McCluskey says, “is actually presenting to some higher-ups in his company who have expressed interest in what he’s done. So that’s not only letting our student be seen by people up in his organization but also giving him a way forward and fast track in that sense.”

“This is a Chance to Explore Something That Interests You”

For students, these ideas for capstone projects lead to something beyond typical coursework: the freedom to explore. Instead of listening to lectures and wondering, “Will this be on the test?” EMP capstone cohorts take the reins of their interests and bring those ideas to the world with the idea of solving a problem for individuals  (teachers/mothers/first responders) or an entire industry (more sustainable satellite building for aerospace).

“This is a chance to explore something that interests you,” McCluskey says. “You’re not coming to a class prescribed exactly what you have to learn. You get to choose where you want to put your time and where your interests lie. It’s a win-win: You’re getting credit for it, and you're also coming out with something that you might personally believe in or want to move forward with.”

McCluskey is proof positive of the benefits of the capstone. She still works with advisors she knew from 30 years ago. 

She says, “You’re really developing those relationships as well, not only with your classmates through working together in peer reviews and class, but also with your advisor and other professionals you interact with over the semester.” 

“I’m their guide on this adventure,” McCluskey adds. “I bring in some guest speakers so they can learn from outside experts. I try to base the guest speakers on student interests like entrepreneurship and journal editors for publishing papers to help spark and refine student ideas. I also have lectures and guest speakers on communication best practices throughout the course, and then help them stay on track.”

Advisors, faculty or working professionals who are chosen by each student, meet with them at least five times over the semester, all the while reviewing the work. These relationships may bear fruit later in a career and provide an important sounding board for bouncing around new ideas.

And in the end, the progress made quite literally puts a capstone on the Engineering Management Program.

“It gives you confidence and pride in the culmination of your degree,” McCluskey says. “It's not just a piece of paper, you actually have a product that you've developed and the ability that you can do something like this.”

Engineering Capstone Projects: For EMP, It’s Just the Beginning

For McCluskey, this is an exciting time. Seeing the four students come through the capstone project fills her with optimism for the future of the project and, more importantly, what it offers to EMP students willing to take on the capstone and flex their engineering skills.

She sees students come in with ideas that are all over the board and then with her help along with other advisors, refine the ideas so they are manageable and attainable. It is gratifying for McCluskey to hear what the cohort had achieved at the end of this pilot program.

“We had them present to all the advisors at the end of the semester and they offered beautiful presentations,” she says. “They were high quality. They were very articulate. They answered questions. It was fun to see the advisors’ excitement with the different products.”

It could be that one student's capstone becomes the cornerstone of another student’s in the future; that it could, as McCluskey says, “spawn another idea for the next capstone. There might be somebody interested in a project that someone else did before and they could take it to the next step.”

For now, the capstone project is offered only in the spring semester, but with growing interest, it could be offered every semester.

The hope is that each session of capstone projects will spur more inspiration and more innovation.

“I was ready for some bumps along the road,” McCluskey says. “I was able to be pretty agile and move where I saw the needs that were there. So I’m really excited to learn more from these students and watch more students grow from an idea to a product they’re proud of. So I’m excited to just have more of them.”

Learn More About the EMP Capstone

To learn more, please visit the Engineering Management Program website or email [email protected] for more information about the capstone project.

Department of Engineering

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Capstone Design Projects

Real Solutions for the Real World

Grounded in a culture and curriculum that values the liberal arts and positive societal change, Wake Engineering students are uniquely prepared to tackle the real-world, multi-disciplinary engineering problems presented in their Capstone Design Projects.

Project teams of 3-5 seniors design, build, and test innovative solutions that meet real-world client, user, and stakeholder needs, with a focus on how their work positively impacts the human experience in the spirit of Wake Forest’s motto, Pro Humanitate. Yearlong Capstone Design Projects require students to work under the guidance of engineering faculty advisors and industry mentors – to think entrepreneurially, creatively, critically and ethically to develop functional prototypes not yet imagined. In their iterative quest to fill an unmet societal need, students dedicate more than 1,600 person-hours to each project, gaining invaluable technical engineering experience in team-based designing, project management, leadership development and professional communication.

The Design Process

At WFU Engineering, we implement an iterative 4-stage process that guides the student teams through a thorough and systematic undertaking. Throughout this process, we hope to demonstrate to students how they can apply the breadth of knowledge they learned throughout their curriculum to the real-world problems they are facing in capstone. A summary of the process is provided below:

• Discovery Design – background information, project scoping, solution benchmarking, generating design requirements
• Conceptual Design – generating and selecting viable concepts to solve the problem
• Embodiment Design – translating rough concepts into preliminary prototypes and models
• Detailed Design – testing, refinement, and improvement of prototypes

In between each of these stages, we students participate in technical design reviews where they interact with subject area experts who can provide critical input on their progress and plans.

Project Proposals

Wake Engineering students understand that tackling real-world problems requires diverse perspectives, including their own. Our Capstone Design Projects embrace this mindset by soliciting project ideas from many sources. Industry, government and non-profit sponsors may submit projects to meet identified needs, while students, faculty and staff may propose their own entrepreneurial ideas.

If you are interested in proposing a project or getting involved with the capstone experience, please visit the following webpages:

Proposing a Project

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Capstone Projects

In their final year, URI engineering students participate in a team-oriented, industry-driven project that focuses on real-world challenges.

Companies bring projects in for students to work on over the course of a full academic year. Past industry sponsors have included Bosch, FM Global, Hexagon Metrology, Sensata, Siemens, and Bose. Teams are made up of three to six students who work together on all aspects of project design and management, including research, brainstorming, design, build, entrepreneurial development, and intellectual property law.

Students gain important skills such as electronics, pcb design, automated test software, robotics, wave tank testing, programming, welding, structural design analysis, drone design and programming, Android application design, and Bluetooth. And because Capstone projects allow students to work directly with a corporate sponsor, they often lead to jobs upon graduation.

Capstone Programs by Program

• Biomedical Engineering Capstone Design
• Civil and Environmental Engineering Capstone Design
• Electrical and Computer Engineering Capstone Design
• Industrial and Systems Engineering Capstone Design
• Mechanical Capstone Design
• Ocean Engineering Capstone Design

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All mechanical and materials engineering students are required to complete a capstone project in their senior year. Below you will find a list of past capstone projects from our engineering students.

2023 Fall Semester Projects

• Rapid Solidification Machine (PDF) Team Members: Anthony Carver, Jesse Potts, Landon Tuck, Courtney Wuilleumier  
• Design and Development of an Extrusion-Based 2.5D/3D Printer for Electronic Packaging (PDF) Team Members: Alex Adams, Dylan Hall, Jacob Harrison, Jeet Patel  
• Development of a Grease Lubrication Mechanism for a Two-Disk Contact Set-Up (PDF) Team Members: Devin Blankenship, Braden Russell, Kevin Kemp, Austin Sherwood, Alex Plas  
• Green Automated Aquaponics System (PDF) Team Members: Intissar Elhani, Alan Whiting, Kevin Grubb, Evan Gehret  
• CFD Modeling of Formula 600 Race Car (PDF) Team Members: Sean Barber, Ethan Cornell, Bailey Hoelscher, Tamal Kambarov, Viswanathan Ramesh  
• Low Head Ocean Energy Storage (PDF) Team Members: Adam Hume, Cameron Floyd, Carson Estep, Dustin Leonard, Samuel Boys

2023 Spring Semester Projects

• Convertible Home Gym Apparatus (PDF) Team Members: Connor Schock, Noah Bledsoe, Jackson Nix  
• Battlefield Model Design (PDF) Team Members: Hameed Juma, Jeff Denton, Lemuel Duncan, Zach Baker  
• Metal Air Batteries for EVs and Electronic Devices (PDF) Team Members: Alexis Burt, Logan Nielsen, Ian Thompson  
• Wave Power Conversion (PDF) Team Members: Luke Banks, Bryce Ullman, Emma Vuckovich  
• SAE Baja Collegiate Design Series (PDF) Team Members: Clay Minor, Logan Rowland, Elliot Wiggins, Julia Sentman, Dominic Manns, Stephanie Gangl  
• Hybrid UAV Power System (PDF) Team Members: Lucas Duncan, Riley Hall, Abigail Kerestes, James Schmitz  
• Optimization of Joining Methods for Generator Converter Chassis (PDF) Team Members: Tyriek Craigs, Seth Perkins, Robert Hall, Jacob Evans  
• Optimization of Temperature Gradient in Magnetic Inductors (PDF) Team Members: Kyle Schroder, Alan Hingsbergen, Blake Martin, Jordan Stanley  
• Optimized Wire Coiler for GE Aviation (PDF) Team Members: Connor Allen, Bradley Jones, Alex Strack, Kaitlin Willi  
• Solar Splash Electric Boat Competition (PDF) Team Members: Brice Prigge, Bryar Powell, Chase Mansell, Evan Hannon  
• Ultralight Copper Current Collectors for Flexible Batteries (PDF) Team Members: Connor Wyckoff, Branen Bussey, Dryana Russell, Mashuj Alshammari  

2022 Fall Semester Projects

• Modular Vibration Testing Kit for Vibrations Lab Course (PDF) Team Members: Michael Ahlers, Seth Madison Tyler Motzko  
• Design of Complex Fluid Electrical Conductivity Cell (PDF) Team Members: Bradley Cripe, Garrett Gniazdowski, Gaspard Matondo, Scott Osborne  
• Structural Optimization of Quadcopter Landing Gear (PDF) Team Members: Taha Etekbali, Jilian Sollars, Katrina Knight  
• Convertible Home Gym (PDF) Team Members: Max Carnevale, Randa Richards, Kevin Hall, Michael Orengo  
• IDC Spring Crimping Tool (PDF) Team Members: Aleni Burcham, Samuel Sowers, Alexander Smith, and Luke Lieghley  
• Ocean Wave Energy Generation (PDF) Team Members: Cameron Slater, Ben Ferree, Daniel Ploss, Austin Shurlow

Past Capstone Projects

• Micro Turbine Engine Design Competition
• Additive Manufacturing Process Design
• SAE Baja Competition
• Fluid Viscosity Measurement
• Folding UAV
• Wheel Life Prediction
• Dual-Plane Airfoil
• Resonance Wave Power
• Autonomous Aerial Remote-Sensing Drone
• Serial Grinder and Imaging System to Create 3-D Images of Vertebrate Rich Sedimentary Rock Cores
• Customizable and Low-Cost Water Quality Monitoring Platform for Grand Lake St. Marys
• Robotic Football Competition
• Wood Materials Project
• Self-Learning Targeting System
• Convertible Home Gym
• Additive Manufacturing Welding
• Programming & Optimization
• Characterizing the Performance of a UAV for a Future Hybrid Powertrain
• Configurable Bike
• Mechanical Tester for Printed Electronics
• Porous Testing Medium
• SAE Aero Design Competition
• Solar Splash Design Competition

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Capstone Projects

Grainger Engineers aren't afraid of hard work. It's how we get results. Our work is resourceful, open to partnerships, and inspires the best in others. We nurture this industrious spirit by providing our M.Eng. students with the opportunity to tackle real-world collaborative Capstone Projects.

M.Eng. students in a Capstone Program course have an exclusive opportunity to complete a one-semester project in cooperation with an industry partner. The partner provides the project and a mentor. The student, working either independently or as part of a team, is responsible for working with their industry partner to satisfy project requirements, communicate progress, and complete the assignment.

Some of our corporate partners

Benefits for Students

• Personal choice. After reviewing available projects, you connect with the industry contact letting them know you’re interested in their project.
• Develop your professional identity while showcasing passion for the industry.
• Build your professional network while working closely with your industry contact and faculty advisor throughout the semester.
• Competitive advantage: relevant industry experience is one of the top things a recruiter looks for when hiring. 

I'm interested!

Benefits for Partners

• Discover solutions to problems without using additional resources.
• Build brand recognition among the future engineering leaders.
• Leadership and professional development experience for employees who serve as project mentors.
• Access to fresh perspectives and energetic problem solvers
• Scout out fresh new talent while providing meaningful, professional development experience for students.

Connect with us

It was a pleasure working with the students, faculty and staff for the Master of Engineering Capstone Program. The students were engaged and had the needed skills. Best of all, the team was able to deliver new ideas and prototype solutions important to PPG.

Kevin P. Gallagher, Ph.D. Scientist, Corporate Science & Technology, PPG

Connect with us to learn more

Lauren Stites Professional Programs Coordinator  217-265-0643  .  [email protected]

Six seniors recognized with Dean’s Awards for outstanding capstone projects

Topics include a method to detect earthquake victims and an image-to-text application for the visually impaired.

Six SEAS students have been recognized with Dean’s Award for Outstanding Engineering Projects (Eliza Grinnell/SEAS)

Six students from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) were recognized with the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Engineering Projects at the recent SEAS Design and Project Fair at the Science and Engineering Complex. Recipients participated in ES100, a year-long capstone course for seniors in the SB engineering program, where each student develops a project to address a real-world engineering problem. The award comes with a prize of $500.

“SEAS students make things that may be really cool, quirky, or fun,” said SEAS Dean David Parkes. “And just as often, their work will help solve a real-world problem and have a significant impact on people’s lives. During ES100, a year-long capstone course for seniors in the SB engineering program, students tackle specific problems. They develop technical specs, design solutions, test their ideas using quantitative analysis and simulations, prototype, and build.”

For the 2023-24 academic year, 42 students completed ES100 projects. Five projects, including one two-student team project, were selected for the award. The award-winning projects covered a broad range of topics, including a remote sensor network for detecting earthquake victims trapped under rubble, an image-to-text application for the visually impaired, a quadcopter drone with enhanced maneuverability, and tool for determining potential water contaminants and suggested filtration solutions in wells.

Serena Zhao’s bioengineering capstone, “Developing Uniform, Photon-Emitting Nanoprobes for Multi-Color Electron Microscopy,” designed nanoprobes that emit colored light when hit by protons from an electron microscope, allowing for much more detailed imaging at the nanoscale level.

“Electron microscopy (EM) images are black and white,” Zhao said. “There’s no specificity, no color labeling. When it comes to studying complex biological processes, that’s a huge disadvantage. My project was trying to build these nanoprobes that emit color under EM, so we can get an electron image, a colored probe image, and then we can overlay them into a colored, labeled image that still has specificity and high resolution.”

The other four award winners were:

• Arba Shkreli and Molly Bosworth , electrical engineering, for their project, “SeASAR: Sensor Application for Search & Rescue in Urban Settings”
• Yasmine Omri, electrical engineering, for her project, “Towards a Real-Time Image-to-Speech Tool for the Visually Impaired: Efficient Hardware for On-device Image Classification”
• Lachlan McGranahan , mechanical engineering, for his project, “Modeling, Simulation, and Control for a Tilt-Rotor Quadcopter”
• Layla Seaver, environmental science and engineering, for her project, “Addressing Forever Chemicals: An Algorithm for PFAS Prediction Modeling and Filter Selection for Private Well-Users”

“I’m interested in using my engineering background to serve actual human needs,” Omri said. “My project falls into a field that we call ‘tiny machine learning.’ I wanted to find a way to run a very complex system locally, with energy efficiency and performance speed. I tried to consolidate it into a practical, application-based system focused specifically on the visually impaired.”

Four SEAS students received Honorable Mention for their senior capstone projects (Eliza Grinnell/SEAS)

Four additional SEAS students received Honorable Mentions for their capstone projects. They are:

• Cherish Jongwe, bioengineering, for his project, “Biofilm-Enhanced Household Water Filtration System for Heavy Metals Removal”
• Nicholas Laws , mechanical engineering, for his project, “Visualization Tool for Chemical Kinetic Pathways in Plasma-Assisted Combustion”
• Anna Ramos, electrical engineering, for her project, “Eye Controls for Quadriplegic Gamers”
• Emma Zuckerman , mechanical engineering, for her project, “Low Reynolds Number Anemometer for Earth’s Stratosphere and the Martian Atmosphere”

Seaver also received a $500 award from the Society of American Military Engineers. A former project lead and co-president of the Harvard chapter of Engineers Without Borders, Seaver has devoted most of her Harvard career to water research and infrastructure development.

“I took Elsie Sunderland’s class on toxicology, which introduced the idea of forever chemicals and contaminants like PFAS,” Seaver said. “When it came time to choose a thesis topic, I thought about the importance of these emerging contaminants for water quality and public health, and how I had the opportunity to work with one of the leading experts in this field through Elsie’s lab. If I could create a tool to make that information from the lab more readily available to users, that’d be the best way I could have an impact with my thesis.”

After she graduates, she’ll be working on water projects at the Boston office of Kleinfelder, an engineering firm.

“One of their most recent developments is looking at PFAS removal technology at the municipal level, which I’m really excited about,” she said.

Topics: Academics , Dean , Awards , Bioengineering , Electrical Engineering , Environmental Science & Engineering , Materials Science & Mechanical Engineering

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The Ohio State University

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Capstone Projects

The Ohio State University is a leader in creating substantive industry experiences for undergraduate engineering students.

Our engineering disciplines have a rich history of using projects developed and sponsored by industry and non-profit organizations for student capstone design courses. Each of our 12 departments coordinate capstone projects, with the Department of Engineering Education facilitating multidisciplinary capstone projects that involve students from several departments as well as those from the Colleges of Business, Medicine, Nursing and more.

Sponsorship

An Ohio State engineering education features a multitude of real-world, hands-on experiences. We look to companies and non-profit organizations to help us create and deliver the penultimate applied research experience. 

Sponsors contribute the problem or idea, participate in design reviews, provide information on previous efforts and contribute domain-specific knowledge.

Sponsor Benefits

• Improve overall productivity
• Create new business opportunities
• Gain fresh perspectives from creative and innovative engineering students
• Gain value-added solutions
• Observe talented students as prospective employees
• Improve processes and products
• Improve quality and reduce costs

Student Benefits

• Gain hands-on experience with real-world problems
• Apply academic knowledge to practical problem-solving
• Receive direct contact with industry professionals
• Interact with companies as prospective employers
• Learn objective thinking by working with diverse team

Bob Rhoads Multidisciplinary Capstone Director Department of Engineering Education [email protected]   614-292-9340

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Top 100 Capstone Project Ideas For Engineering Students In 2022

Hello guys, welcome back to my blog. In this article, I will share the top 10 capstone project ideas for engineering students in 2021, what is a capstone project, topics for a capstone project, etc.

If you have any electrical, electronics, and computer science doubts, then  ask questions . You can also catch me on Instagram –  CS Electrical & Electronics .

Also, read:

• Top 10 MATLAB Projects For Electrical And Electronics Engineers .
• Final Year Projects For Electrical Engineering .
• 100 + Electrical Engineering Projects For Students .

Capstone Project Ideas

What is a Capstone Project?

A capstone project is done for one year by students, they will work on a project for two-semester. In the capstone project, students will study the research papers in deep and design their project by using some tools.

Capstone Project Ideas Are

01. Testing Method and Application for Impulse- Dispersed Current Around Earthing Devices in Power Transmission Networks

02. Fuzzy Approach to Student-Project Allocation (SPA) Problem .

03. Maritime DC Power System With Generation Topology Consisting of Combination of Permanent Magnet Generator and Diode Rectifier .

04. An Urban Charging Infrastructure for Electric Road Freight Operations: A Case Study for Cambridge UK .

05. Low-Voltage Unipolar Inverter Based on Top-Gate Electric-Double-Layer Thin-Film Transistors Gated by Silica Proton Conductor .

06. Safety Distance Analysis of 500kV Transmission Line Tower UAV Patrol Inspection .

07. Analysis of Electrical Impedance Myography Electrodes Configuration for Local Muscle Fatigue Evaluation Based on Finite Element Method .

08. A Comprehensive Review of Wireless Charging Technologies for Electric Vehicles .

09. Electric Vehicle Battery Cycle Aging Evaluation in Real-World Daily Driving and Vehicle-to-Grid Services .

10. Coordinated Scheduling for Improving Uncertain Wind Power Adsorption in Electric Vehicles—Wind Integrated Power Systems by Multiobjective Optimization Approach .

11. Sub-THz Circularly Polarized Horn Antenna Using Wire Electrical Discharge Machining for 6G Wireless Communications .

12. Space Vector Modulation for Distributed Inverter-Fed Induction Motor Drive for Electric Vehicle Application .

13. Bidirectional Three-Level Cascaded Converter With Deadbeat Control for HESS in Solar-Assisted Electric Vehicles .

14. Harmonics and Interharmonics Analysis of Electrical Arc Furnaces Based on Spectral Model Optimization With High-Resolution Windowing .

15. Ageing: Causes and Effects on the Reliability of Polypropylene Film Used for HVDC Capacitor .

16. The Probabilistic Evaluation of Net Present Value of Electric Power Distribution Systems Based on the Kaldor–Hicks Compensation Principle .

17. Decentralized Charging of Plug-In Electric Vehicles and Impact on Transmission System Dynamics .

18. HPC-Based Probabilistic Analysis of LV Networks With EVs: Impacts and Control .

19. Development of a Portable Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy System for Bio-Detection .

20. Risk Assessment on Offshore Photovoltaic Power Generation Projects in China Using D Numbers and ANP .

21. Analysis of Dynamic Processes in Single-Cell Electroporation and Their Effects on Parameter Selection Based on the Finite-Element Model .

22. A New Coil Structure and Its Optimization Design With Constant Output Voltage and Constant Output Current for Electric Vehicle Dynamic Wireless Charging .

23. A Graphical Game Approach to Electrical Vehicle Charging Scheduling: Correlated Equilibrium and Latency Minimization .

24. Sensitivity Guided Image Fusion for Electrical Capacitance Tomography .

25. Design and Building of an Automatic Alternator Synchronizer Based on Open-Hardware Arduino Platform .

26. A Phaseless Microwave Imaging Approach Based on a Lebesgue-Space Inversion Algorithm .

27. Direct Phase-Change Cooling of Vapor Chamber Integrated With IGBT Power Electronic Module for Automotive Application .

28. Vulnerability Assessment of Equipment Excited by Disturbances Based on Support Vector Machine and Gaussian Process Regression .

29. A New Finite-Element Method to Deal With Motion Problem of Electromagnetic Rail Launcher .

30. A Novel Ultralow RON,sp Triple RESURF LDMOS With Sandwich n-p-n Layer .

31. Design and Verification Test of an HTS Leakage Flux-Controlled Reactor .

32. An Ordered Curtailment Strategy for Offshore Wind Power Under Extreme Weather Conditions Considering the Resilience of the Grid .

33. Current Reconstruction of Bundle Conductors Based on Tunneling Magnetoresistive Sensors .

34. WSN-Based Measurement of Ion-Current Density Under High-Voltage Direct Current Transmission Lines .

35. Influence of Rotor-Pole Number on Electromagnetic Performance of Novel Double-Rotor Hybrid Excited Axial Switched-Flux Permanent-Magnet Machines for EV/HEV Applications .

36. Electromagnetic Vibration and Noise of the Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motors for Electric Vehicles: An Overview .

37. Incentive-Compatible Market Clearing for a Two-Stage Integrated Electricity-Gas-Heat Market .

38. Teaching Power Electronics With a Design-Oriented, Project-Based Learning Method at the Technical University of Denmark .

39. A Circuits and Systems Perspective of Organic/Printed Electronics: Review, Challenges, and Contemporary and Emerging Design Approaches .

40. MgO Based Magnetic Tunnel Junctions With Co20Fe60B20 Sensing Layer for Magnetic Field Sensors .

41. Reduction of Offset Field in Top-Pinned MTJ With Synthetic Antiferromagnetic Free Layer .

42. Cost-Effective Printed Electrodes Based on Emerging Materials Applied to Biosignal Acquisition .

43. A Review and Analysis of Automatic Optical Inspection and Quality Monitoring Methods in Electronics Industry .

44. Improved English Immersion Teaching Methods for the Course of Power Electronics for Energy Storage System in China .

45. New Improved Model and Accurate Analytical Response of SiPMs Coupled to Read-Out Electronics .

46. Graphene Field-Effect Transistors for Radio-Frequency Flexible Electronics .

47. Statistical Write Stability Characterization in SRAM Cells at Low Supply Voltage .

48. Teaching Electronics to Aeronautical Engineering Students by Developing Projects .

49. Improved ON-State Reliability of Atom Switch Using Alloy Electrodes .

50. Hybrid Thermal Modeling to Predict LED Thermal Behavior in Hybrid Electronics .

51. Fabrication of Phase-Shifted Fiber Bragg Grating by Femtosecond Laser Shield Method .

52. Humidity Sensor Based on Fabry–Perot Interferometer and Intracavity Sensing of Fiber Laser .

53. Switching Performance Analysis of Vertical GaN FinFETs: Impact of Interfin Designs .

54. Analysis of Thickness Variation in Biological Tissues Using Microwave Sensors for Health Monitoring Applications .

55. Ultrasound Measurement Using On-Chip Optical Micro-Resonators and Digital Optical Frequency Comb .

56. EMFi-Based Ultrasonic Sensory Array for 3D Localization of Reflectors Using Positioning Algorithms .

57. Single-Mode Quantum Cascade Laser Array Emitting From a Single Facet .

58. Superior Implementation of Accelerated QR Decomposition for Ultrasound Imaging .

59. Resonant-Type Piezoelectric Screw Motor for One Degree of Freedom Positioning Platform Application .

60. Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Cellular Two-Way Relay Networks With Massive MIMO .

61. Dual-Band Bandpass Filter With Wide Stopband Using One Stepped-Impedance Ring Resonator With Shorted Stubs .

62. A Novel Wide-Angle Scanning Phased Array Based on Dual-Mode Pattern-Reconfigurable Elements .

63. Full-Duplex SWIPT Relaying Based on Spatial-Modulation .

64. An Academic Approach to FPGA Design Based on a Distance Meter Circuit .

65. Direct SMT Interconnections of Large Low-CTE Interposers to Printed Wiring Board Using Copper Microwire Arrays .

66. Integrated Reconfigurable Silicon Photonics Switch Matrix in IRIS Project: Technological Achievements and Experimental Results .

67. Lifelogging Data Validation Model for Internet of Things Enabled Personalized Healthcare .

68. Adaptive Zeroing-Gradient Controller for Ship Course Tracking With Near Singularity Considered and Zero Theoretical Tracking Error .

69. Radio Interface Evolution Towards 5G and Enhanced Local Area Communications .

70. Reliability Assessment Model of IMA Partition Software Using Stochastic Petri Nets .

71. Medium-Voltage Power Converter Interface for Multigenerator Marine Energy Conversion Systems .

72. A Hybrid Prognostics Technique for Rolling Element Bearings Using Adaptive Predictive Models .

73. A Hybrid Method of Remaining Useful Life Prediction for Aircraft Auxiliary Power Unit .

74. Insensitivity to Humidity in Fabry–Perot Sensor With Multilayer Graphene Diaphragm .

75. Design and Testing of a Kinetic Energy Harvester Embedded Into an Oceanic Drifter .

76. 3-D Dual-Gate Photosensitive Thin-Film Transistor Architectures Based on Amorphous Silicon .

77. Automatic Structure Generation and Parameter Optimization for CMOS Voltage Reference Circuit .

78. CNN-Based Intra-Prediction for Lossless HEVC .

79. Resource Allocation for D2D Links in the FFR and SFR Aided Cellular Downlink .

80. A Hybrid EF/DF Protocol With Rateless Coded Network Code for Two-Way Relay Channels .

81. An Efficient Task Assignment Framework to Accelerate DPU-Based Convolutional Neural Network Inference on FPGAs .

82. Phase Calibration of On-Chip Optical Phased Arrays via Interference Technique .

83. A Multi-Carrier-Frequency Random-Transmission Chirp Sequence for TDM MIMO Automotive Radar .

84. High-Stability Algorithm in White-Light Phase-Shifting Interferometry for Disturbance Suppression .

85. Polarimetric Calibration Scheme Combining Internal and External Calibrations, and Experiment for Gaofen-3 .

86. Wireless Wearable Magnetometer-Based Sensor for Sleep Quality Monitoring .

87. Power-Gated 9T SRAM Cell for Low-Energy Operation .

88. An Improved Matrix Generation Framework for Thermal Aware Placement in VLSI .

89. Trip-Point Bit-Line Precharge Sensing Scheme for Single-Ended SRAM .

90. Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces to Achieve the Full-Duplex Wireless Communication .

91. Toward Energy-Awareness Smart Building: Discover the Fingerprint of Your Electrical Appliances .

92. Analysis of the starting transient of a synchronous reluctance motor for direct-on-line applications .

93. Motor Design and Characteristics Comparison of Outer-Rotor-Type BLDC Motor and BLAC Motor Based on Numerical Analysis .

94. IEEE Draft Guide for Motor Operated Valve (MOV) Motor Application, Protection, Control, and Testing in Nuclear Power Generating Stations .

95. A Novel Track Structure of Double-Sided Linear PM Synchronous Motor for Low Cost and High Force Density Applications .

96. A Novel Dual Three-Phase Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor With Asymmetric Stator Winding .

97. A new two-motor drive to control a two-phase induction motor and a DC motor .

98. Development of a 7.5kW High Speed Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Spindle Motor for CNC Milling Machine .

99. Optimal Design of the 2nd Generation TMED Traction Motor .

100. Power factor correction and power quality improvement in BLDC motor drive using SEPIC converter

These are the different capstone project ideas from IEEE website. I hope this article “capstone project” may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading.

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• Capstone Projects

The Capstone Project is intended to culminate the skills of the BME undergraduate degree. The students are required to take the course and complete the project their senior year. Below are examples of student projects from previous years. 

Class of 2023

Electromyography Guided Video Game Therapy for Stroke Survivors

Students:  Anisa Abdulhussein, Hannamarie Ecobiza, Nikhil Patel, Carter Ung

Advisor:  Dr. Jerome Schultz

A Hybrid in Silico Model of the Rabbit Bulbospongiosus Nerve

Students:  Lilly Roelofs, Anh Tran, Dana Albishah, Hoang Tran, David Lloyd, Zuha Yousuf, Farial Rahman, Laura Rubio

Advisor:  Dr. Mario Romero-Ortega

Highly Specific Vertical Flow-Based Point-of-Care For Rapid Diagnosis of Lupus

Students:  Valeria Espinosa, Lediya Haider, Bao Le, and Christian Pena

Advisor:  Dr. Chandra Mohan

Design and Fabrication of Novel Flexible and Elastomeric   Device for Bladder Neuromodulation  

Students:  Kenneth Nguyen, Laura Rubio, Jessica Avellaneda, Juan Gonzalez

Residual Gastric Stomach Volume via Dye Dilution

Students:  Sean Chakraborty, Tien Tran, Elizabeth Kolb, Elaine Raymond

Remote Tremor Monitoring System

Students:  Mikayla Deehring, Bryan McElvy, Elizabeth Perry, William Walker

Advisor:  Dr. Nuri Ince

BCI Assistance in Simple Hand Movements to Enable IMC/CMC-Based Rehabilitation for Post-Stroke Patients

Students:  Wesley Cherry, Shanzeh Imran, Rami ElHajj, Nivriti Sabhani

Advisor:  Dr. Yingchun Zhang

3D Printing Scaffold for Cardiovascular Tissue Regeneration

Students:  Anaga Ajoy, Kailee Keiser, Aria Shankar, Alexa Truong

Advisor:  Dr. Renita Horton

Electrotactile Stimulator for Modeling Localized Touch in the Hand

Students:  Alan Luu, Raed Mohammed, Anique Siddiqui, and Brendan Wong

CNN-Driven Hand Prosthetic for Neurorehabilitation

Students:  Neftali Garcia, Wajid Masood, Angela Soto

Class of 2022

Skin Blood Flow Based on a Thermal Sensor

Students:  Rumaisa Baig, Aliza Sajid, Kinda Aladdasi, Hira Rizvi, and Eugenia Ponte

3D Printing of Scaffolds for Cardiovascular Tissue

Students:  Ayesha Budhwani, Duc Ho, Dorothy Mwakina, Nicolas Nino

Graphene Electrodes for Body Energy Harvesting

Students:  Sarah Hakam, Hy Doan, Attiya Hussaini, Krishna Sarvani Deshabtotla

COVID-19 Antibodies Detection Using Spike Protein Microarray Chip

Students:  Fariz Nazir, Chinenye Chidomere, Bryan Choo, Jessica Chidomere

Advisor:  Dr. Tianfu Wu

Relating Pressure to fNIRS Optical Signal Quality

Students:  Mautin Ashimiu, Shannen Eshelman, Amanda Reyes, Catherine Tran

Advisor:  Dr. Luca Pollonini and Dr. Samuel Montero Hernandez

Optimization of a Loading Tool for a Novel Cardiac Assist Device (CAD)

Students:  Amie Theall, Barbora Bobakova, Zarmeen Khan, Abigail Janvier

The ExoAssist:  A Soft Exoskeleton Device for Foot Drop

Students:  Alexandru Neagu, Dailene Torres, Loren Thompson, Dylan Creasey

Advisor:  Dr. Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal

Physical Therapy Device for Shoulder Rehabilitation

Students:  Jordyn Folh, Raeedah Alsayoud, Mirren Robison, Xanthica Carmona

Residual Gastric Volume by George’s Dye Dilution Method

Students:  Sarah Aldin, Rita Maduro, Patrick Calderon, Hebah Kafina

EEG-based Control of a Robotic Hand

Students:  Martin Reyes, Regan Persyn, Quynh Nguyen, Bryan Gutierrez

Advisor:  Dr. Yingchun Zhang and Michael Houston

ASD Screening in Children using Machine Learning

Students:  Yalda Barram, Tatiana Barroso, Theresa Pham, and Amy Tang

Advisor:  Dr. Joseph Francis

Optimized PEGDA Hydrogel Miniature Gel Electrophoresis for Genomic Analysis

Students:  Alma Antonette Antonio, Jose Carrion, Lindsey McGill, Sharmeen Shahid

Advisor:  Dr. Metin Akay and Dr. Yasemin Akay

Class of 2021

Project 1: Vital Sign Wristband

Abstract: As most hospitals transition to a digital world in order to streamline medical procedure, our group wanted to streamline the check in process by making a wristband that measures vital signs. We wanted the wristband to measure heart rate, temperature, and blood oxygen, and for this data to be sent to an app. We first decided which sensors to use, and moved forward with the MCP9808 temperature sensor and the MAX30100 sensor for heart rate and blood oxygen. We then assured the MCP9808 worked to our standards by connecting it to a ESP32 microcontroller on a breadboard. The connection and reading of the sensor required Arduino code, which we constructed with online resources. After getting the readings that aligned with our expected values, we followed the same procedure with the MAX30100 sensor. We then ‘pushed’ the data to an app that we constructed using Blynk, an app that is used to read data from microcontrollers. After ‘pushing’ the data to our app, we were ready to start making the wristband by connecting the sensors to the ESP32s, and attaching the connections to a wristband using V elcro. With our final prototype, we were able to wirelessly read heart rate, temperature, and blood oxygen from the Blynk app. To more efficiently assist in hospital applications, a potential future direction for this project would be to add blood pressure as a parameter for the wristband. We would also like the wristband to ID the patient that is wearing it in order to track and assign the data throughout their stay.

Project 2: Development of a low cost method to evaluate mask efficiency

Abstract: Since the start of the pandemic, over 1.5 Billion single use face masks have been used across the globe. Many people have also made and using homemade masks due to convenience or necessity. At the start of the pandemic there was an acute shortage of masks and even now, with the lifting of mask mandates across the United States, we anticipate that masks will still be used by the public for the foreseeable future. Our objective was to develop a fast, low cost reusable method to evaluate the efficiency of face masks and the materials that are used to manufacture them. We believe that consumers could benefit from knowing that masks that they buy or make are useful and will protect them from COVID 19 and future diseases. To accomplish this, we built a self contained unit that works by measuring the efficiency of material by calculating the amount of light reflected by aerosolized salt solution that penetrates masks. The consumer can use their phone to take a picture of the light compartment through the device and upload the result to our website that will give them the efficiency immediately. In future versions we hope to make the process easier by using an inbuilt camera and a single switch to turn the device on and off.

Project 3: Sensor Array for COVID19 Diagnostics

Abstract: The emergence of the COVID 19 pandemic has highlighted the need for reliable and rapid diagnostic tools to aid in community wide contact tracing and monitoring efforts. Early Covid 19 tests relied on either molecular or serological assays, which had long turnaround times and required specialized equipment and personnel. Our goal was to create a diagnostic tool that could provide rapid and accurate patient feedback without the need of special equipment. To this end we employed the use of a metal oxide array, which was composed of four sensors, in order to detect endogenous Volatile Organic Compounds in the breath. These sensors were fabricated and supplied by the Nanodevices and Materials Lab. We developed a comprehensive testing setup involving a Mass Flow Controller, Gas Chamber, Multiplexor, and a Picoammeter with the creation of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to make the data collection autonomous and efficient. We also devised a pattern recognition algorithm using Principal Component Analysis and K Means Clustering to identify our four target gases based on the sensor array’s response.

Project 4: Microcontroller Based Functional Electrical Stimulator

Abstract: Electrical stimulation is used in various therapeutic applications in medicine, ranging from neuromodulation to functional mapping of the brain. There are still many of these devices that are operated through manual tuning and pressing buttons. Having the ability to control these analog devices from a computer is critical for research and advanced therapy , but this cannot be done The aim of this Capstone Project is to develop a low cost Functional Electrical Stimulator (FES) that can be fully controlled with a microcontroller (Teensy 3.5) connected to a PC through a USB interface. In practice, the system can be used in various scenarios, but the intended application is for delivering non invasive Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES). The hardware was developed using 9 Volt batteries connected to DC DC boosters for power supply and other primary components that include analog switches and transistors. This system is controlled through Arduino IDE and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed within MATLAB that allows for ease of manipulation and further development in the future. We have successfully produced a symmetrical, biphasic square wave capable of operating at 60 microsecond pulse widths. We have also demonstrated the capability of producing a biphasic sinusoidal wave with flexible frequency. One future goal of this system is to fuse it with a brain computer interface (BCI) that can drive the FES to improve the rehabilitation of the patients suffering from stroke or spinal cord injury by translating their thoughts to muscle contractions and associated movement.

Project 5: Inclusive System for Image Capture and Rheological Image Analysis for Artificial Microvascular Network

Abstract: Measuring blood flow in capillaries of an Artificial MicroVascular Network (AMVN) device is typically done using a research grade inverted microscope. Research grade microscopes can provide high resolution images but are bulky, unportable, and expensive, which significantly limits the scope of AMVN technology. As an alternative, we have developed an inclusive, portable system that contains all of the necessary hardware to perform the experiment as well as a code to analyze the perfusion rates of the AMVN channels. The system utilizes a camera and magnification lens to simulate the optics of a microscope, but in a more affordable, compact, and user friendly unit. Video captured by the system can easily be transferred to a laptop for analysis. The perfusion rate data produced using our code has yielded reproducible and accurate results comparable to values in previous literature. This inclusive system can be used to perform analysis on a variety of experiments including testing the effect of new storage conditions, additive solutions, novel drugs, and rejuvenation strategies on the rheological properties of red blood cells in vitro. Future work could entail expanding the usefulness of the system to function with various different microfluidic devices.

Project 6: Voice Activated Alarm System for Patients with Limited Mobility

Abstract: Current hospital alert systems require a mechanical input, most commonly the push of a button Patients with mobility issues such as quadriplegics are unable to perform this input Most solutions to this problem require proximity and are prone to displacement, such as clipping the button to patients’ gowns to press with their chin If these devices are displaced, the patient is unable to correct it, and must resort to yelling to alert a nurse Our device will attempt to mitigate these shortcomings by allowing the patient to speak to activate the alert system, allowing for input at a greater distance with no limb movements required The device uses a mini computer with a microphone attachment for voice input and activation, and a microcontroller connected to a solenoid for mechanical activation of the alert system. This allows for the device to be easily and selectively integrated into the existing alert system at most hospitals We assembled and programmed the device to respond to a specific key phrase amid ambient noise and were able to voice activate the solenoid, as well as demonstrate that it could generate enough force to push a button Future work could replace the external power source with a battery, and compact into a flexible attachment This device will improve accessibility and quality of life for patients with restricted limb mobility

Project 7: Biological Organism Recording and Integrated System During Rocket Launch

Abstract: Space exploration has deleterious effects on the human body and can lead to significant long term adverse effects such as muscle atrophy and bone density loss Many astronauts undergo intense training to prepare for a launch such as High G training, where they are exposed to a high amount of G force Understanding the impact the hypergravity and microgravity environments have on tissue development and function is critical to keeping humans healthy for space travel, especially with the upcoming Artemis program and Mars missions Thus, there is need for a device that can monitor the effects that high action events, such as a rocket launch, has on an organism’s tissues in real time The Biological Organism Recording and Integrated System (BORIS is a device mounted inside the payload bay of Space City Rocketry’s high powered rocket Oberon, with the aim of observing and recording the impact of high accelerative forces on a cell culture to understand how the forces of flight make changes to the structure and function of cell walls and membranes Video footage of magnified cells and interior payload temperature are recorded for analysis of cell conditions and to determine the change in cell diameter during the flight a test flight in March observed rudimentary footage during a 24 second ascent of 7514 N applied on the cells, and internal temperature varied over 1 C Increased magnification and securing the switch on the device light are the next steps to ensure video is visible for the whole flight and that clusters of cells may be identified more easily.

Project 8: Remote Rehabilitation System

Abstract: Electromyography signals are electrical impulses generated by muscle activation. Such signals are obtained using an EMG device to analyze the muscles of interest and determine any muscular or motor dysfunction. Consequently, they can be used for rehabilitation purposes. Currently, there are only a few wireless EMG systems, and they are expensive. However, they can be highly beneficial in cases that would require patient isolation or other reasons. Inspired by this and the growing telerehabilitation, our team set a goal to build an affordable and wireless rehab system that entails building the EMG device and the mobile application necessary to transfer/receive data. The device consists of 3 MyoWare sensors that collect and transfer integrated and rectified EMG signals to the mobile app via the Bluetooth module. The app was built through a program, compatible with the device’s components, called MIT App Inventor 2, and works on Android phones only. The application receives and displays the EMG signals that can also be saved locally. Additionally, it can time the patient’s activity. Further improvements could be made to our system to provide a highly effective remote rehab system for the targeted patients.

Project 9: Blood Flowmeter for Skin

Abstract: For diabetic patients, blood circulation to extremities becomes slower and, as result, can lead to decreased healing rate and increased risk for infection. A lack of treatment can lead to the infection potentially spreading to surrounding tissue and even limb amputation. Monitoring blood flow rate is crucial in detecting the risk for such an infection. While there are other devices for measuring blood flow, such as the Laser Doppler flowmeter, the cost for these devices are often high and used mainly in a clinical setting. We proposed a design for a low cost and portable device to calculate the average energy required to keep a small region of skin at a set temperature for one minute and relate that measurement to blood flow. Our device consists of a small heating coil made from nichrome wire and has an NTC thermistor placed in the center of the coil. We used Arduino Uno as a hardware to software platform and coded for our device via MATLAB. Our software utilizes an on off temperature control system and a relay component to safely power the heating element to the set temperature. To test our device, we developed a low cost artificial vein model to mimic blood circulation and correlated varying flow rates to average energy required to keep the circulation five degrees higher than its current temperature. Our device demonstrates a potential low cost method for measuring blood circulation and for improving the lives of diabetic patients.

Project 10: A Wireless sEMG Based Robotic Rehabilitation System

Abstract: Stroke has been a huge concern throughout the years as it is known to be one of the leading causes of death in the United States For stroke patients, there are a couple of techniques such as targeted physical and technology assisted activities that would help them and serve as therapy to gain motor movement. Nevertheless, new advances in bioengineering have introduced a robotic hand named ‘Hand of Hope” (HoH) that uses real time surface electromyographic signals (sEMG) to control the robotic hand according to the patient’s muscle signals. sEMG is a procedure that measures muscle response or electrical activity based on an individual’s response to nerve stimulation and is recorded by placing electrodes on the surface of a patient’s muscle In this project, TMSi Refa Amplifier was used to amplify the signals received from the sEMG electrodes and send it to MATLAB Later, the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) communication will serve as a method of communication between the commands in MATLAB and the robotic hand motor control performance based on the classified sEMG signals The experiment included fine motor movements such as hand opening/closing and the movement of finger combination gestures. By creating a LDA classifier with 81 accuracy, we were able to have the robotic hand identify and assist in 5 different gestures We hope this stroke rehabilitation technique will help patients with reinforcement of their fine motor function through the strengthening of the nerve signal pathway

Project 11: Quantifying Peripheral Nerves using Deep Learning

Abstract: Larger neurons in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) have thick myelin sheaths which cause them to be easy to detect during transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies. Smaller neurons that tend to be unmyelinated lack the distinct bold outline. Current methods of quantifying axons in PN tissue include manual counting, which is labor intensive and inaccurate. This project is aiming to develop an open source software using Python to automatically identify and quantify cell types (large/small neurons) from TEM images of PN tissue. We built a basic mask region based convolutional neural network (Mask R CNN) using a pre trained object detection model to identify the presence, location, and type of cells. This program is able segment a large image, learn filter values, detect axons apart from other cells, then places a color mask over the cell depending on the thickness of the myelin sheaths. These masks are quantified. As can be seen in the image our program can detect larger, myelinated axons but has trouble with detecting smaller axons. Once we adjust our code to locate both types of axons, we will run our program with a larger dataset of TEM images then compare to manually counted images. This program can be made more beneficial for research teams by further developing it into a deep learning neural network. This will allow researchers to process larger datasets with more accurate results and less preprocessing. Another future direction is to integrate this program with an image analysis software, such as Image J, using Jython , a python java hybrid code.

Project 12: Smart Multiplex Flow Meter Sensor System

Abstract: Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is a highly prevalent condition in women. This condition consists of weakened pelvic muscles leading to diminished bladder control; often leading to uncontrollable leakage during physical movements. Despite the inconveniences of this disorder, treatment options are limited due to safety and efficacy concerns. To study this, we created an automated metabolic cage suited for female rabbits with induced SUI. The objective of this proposal was to create an adaptable system that includes a collection apparatus and a sensor system. These are then attached to the current cages at the University of Houston to measure volume and frequency of micturition events with easy access for data retrieval. This prototype incorporates a mesh filter, a funnel, a flow rate sensor, a peristaltic pump, and an Arduino with Bluetooth capabilities. The data is wirelessly transmitted to a local PC for easy processing and data analysis. Overall, the prototype has been successful in measuring correct volumes of fluid with approximately 93% accuracy and allows for the automatic transfer of data from the Arduino to the mounted SD card for further data analysis. For the future, we plan to test our prototype with SUI-induced rabbits to ensure that the prototype is compatible, accurate for urine testing, and that the prototype can be used to study SUI. This can revolutionize the research industry by improving accuracy of urinary data from rabbits to further the understanding of SUI and other urinary disorders.

Class of 2015

Project 1: Fabrication of Immunosensing Soft Contact Lens as a POC System in Eye Infection Detection

Abstract: Rapid diagnosis of infection within the eye is an area of study that has (to date) been very limited in exploration and innovation. Differentiation between bacterial, fungal, and viral infections within the eye is a difficult process due to the similarities in symptoms in patients with a variety of ocular infections. Proposed is an ELISA-based immunosensing contact lens capable of detecting inflammatory protein markers within human aqueous tears. Soft contact lens assembly will be conducted via two primary methods: synthesis of novel hydrogel-based lens with maximum binding capabilities and improved cross-linking and surface plasma modification of commercially available soft contact lens for binding and successful detection. The lenses will be printed with anti- VCAM-1 antibodies, intended for the detection of the protein VCAM-1, an inflammatory marker. Detection will be conducted using a solution of peroxidase-labeled secondary antibodies in conjunction with a silver reagent, initiating an enzyme-catalyzed silver deposition reaction indicative of the presence of the inflammatory marker. Initial progress in development has been focused on research and acquisition of materials. Due to the limited literature available in the development of such novel diagnostic tools, extensive research has been conducted into creating a device with optimum binding and detecting capabilities. All materials have been sourced and, once received, will immediately be used for hydrogel synthesis and commercial lens plasma modification. Extensive testing will be conducted on the lenses, utilizing an artificial “tear” solution containing VCAM-1 protein for feasibility of design. Following establishment of success of this design, additional modifications will be made to test lens’ capability for differentiating between different types of inflammatory responses and viability of this diagnostic device in clinical applications.

Project 2: Modular Physiological Monitoring System

Abstract: The intended application of the project is vital monitoring during commercial space flights, home healthcare, fitness, and research. The system will measure both physiological and environmental parameters simultaneously. EKG, skin temperature, barometric pressure (altitude), ambient temperature, accelerations, and UV index are the parameters that will be measured. The centerpiece of the system is the Arduino microcontroller. All sensors and the EKG shield are connected to the Arduino boards, which extract the readings of all sensors. The extracted data will be sent to a computer through Wi-Fi thanks to the wireless capability of the Arduino Yun microcontroller. Plotly will be used for data extraction and analysis. Parameter relational plots will be constructed using physiological response to environmental stressors. At the conclusion of last semester we constructed a model on an Arduino Uno board to demonstrate system capabilities. An ambient temperature sensor was implemented in the model with on-board LED lights (green and red) that provided notification (Red LED) when the ambient temperature exceeded 21.5 degrees Celsius. An LCD monitor was also included to demonstrate continuous sensor measurements and display. At the beginning of the second semester we had completed development of the hardware prototype (Milestone 1) and the formation of the Central Hardware Interface (CHI) (Milestone 2), and were starting to work on the data extraction, analysis, and display. This was done by using Plotly to communicate sensor data wirelessly to a server. A computer then extracts this data and displays it in real-time. At the conclusion of the second semester, we had a completed system that utilized two microcontrollers to wirelessly extract and display data (Milestone 3). Although using two microcontrollers was not our original objective, it was the best way for us to integrate the serial EKG into the system. Future work can focus on the miniaturization of the system and establishing communication between the two boards. Our total expenditure for this project was $168 in parts and $6400 in labor.

Project 3: Embryo Dissection Station

Abstract: The purpose of our project was to design, improve, and develop the methods and processes used for the live embryo dissection, including, improvement to the dissection station and examination process. The specific concentration of this project was the construction of a live embryo dissection station that has the same uniform temperature throughout the apparatus that is also economical with regard to fabrication (i.e., the process is cost- and time-effective).

Project 4: Google Glass as a Diagnostic for Melanoma

Abstract: Early melanoma diagnosis is vital for the prevention of complication onsets that may compromise an individual’s life span. In order to diagnose for the presence of melanoma, patients are required to visit a medical facility, which results in the negligence of early symptoms. Our team proposed to develop a melanoma diagnostic utility using Google Glass, which would help provide a point-of-care diagnosis without having to visit a medical facility. Developing a Google Glass diagnostic presents various challenges that mandate the integration of different techniques. The Glass is only capable of capturing 2 dimensional images with its camera, but in order to enhance the diagnostic accuracy, we are developing a code based on the modification of existing algorithms that can create 3-dimensional images from 2-dimensional images. Implementing additional diagnostic criteria for existing 2-dimensional analysis will allow for a 3-dimensional melanoma analysis, which would provide definitive diagnostic results. Image acquisition and analysis will be done via servers that support the processes, and then integrated into the Google Glass. At this time, the Google Glass provides big challenges due to its relative new introduction into the technology market. Therefore, our project includes establishing a method to connect the Google Glass to a development platform, create a graphical user interface to display the diagnostic results, and integrate the servers for a comprehensive diagnosis. During this semester, we were able to establish the software development platform, create a sample melanoma diagnostic display, create a preliminary low resolution 3-dimensional image construct, and run successful 2-dimensional analysis on sample melanoma images. The sponsors covered the Google Glass cost of $1,500, and the University of Houston provides the necessary software for the development process.

Project 5: Optimization of SMFT-based Actuation System Final Report

Abstract: In our Capstone Design Project, we are tasked to optimize an actuation system based on Solid Media Flexible Transmission (SMFT). The SMFT-based system is applicable for robot-assisted surgeries within the MRI, where a very strong permanent magnetic field, fast changing magnetic field gradients and RF pulses are used. SMFT tubes have the potential to efficiently transfer force without the use of magnetically susceptible materials, making it compatible with the MRI scanner. Previously, the tubes have been used at a force transfer efficiency of 50%. Our goal is to increase the force transfer efficiency to 70%. To achieve this goal, we designed a force transfer efficiency testing system involving load cell force sensors, a testing station, and SMFT tubes (Milestones 1, 2, and 3). We also aimed to complete the actuation system by assembling an MRI-compatible needle onto it (Milestone 4). We have successfully completed Milestones 1 and 2, which involves calibrating the load cell and designing a cost-efficient stationary load cell holder to hold the load cell for force efficiency tests. In completing Milestone 3, we have successfully made more stable connections using BNC-BNC cables and interlocking connectors and collected data for the force transfer efficiency of a 1m SMFT tube. Milestone 4 involves assembling a needle holder to be attached to the actuation system and testing it on a porcine kidney suspended in a ballistic gel. The project has reliability constraints for the load cell rod, economic constraints in the 3D printing of the load cell testing station, and manufacturability constraint in the current 3D printing cost and the project’s applicability to test other force transfer systems. During the testing, standards such as the maximum load capacity and the excitation voltage of the load cells have to be determined. The load cell itself follows the accuracy standard IEC 61298-2. In conclusion, the force transfer efficiency decreases with increasing lengths of tubes, but increases at an average of 12.1% across all tubes.

Class of 2014

Project 1: Wireless ECG and Respiratory Monitoring System 

Abstract: The purpose of this project is to design a Wireless ECG and Respiratory Monitoring System. The ECG signal would be collected by electrodes and then amplified and filtered by analog circuit. Next the microcontroller would convert the analog signal into digital signal and amplify it even more. The microcontroller is included in the Wireless transmitter system. Then the data will be sent through MSP430 wireless transmitter (TI wireless development tool) to be processed in a local PC. Our Respiratory monitoring system measures the airflow by using nasal cannula pressure system. This system consists of a nasal cannula (which is standard for oxygen administration) connected to a pressure transducer. Respiratory waveform signal will be generated by detecting the fluctuations in pressure caused by inspiration and expiration. The data will be sent through the same wireless transmitter to be processed in a local PC.

Project 2: Optical Projection Tomography System

Abstract: The scope of this project is to build for Baylor College of Medicine an Optical Projection Tomography system to use in function with an ongoing embryology study. The goal of this project is for the Optical Projection Tomography system to provide a method for high throughput murine embryo imaging. Our design is based on previously published work from the University of Toronto with tweaks and customizations for the specific application requested by Baylor College of Medicine. These tweaks include a differing CCD camera and lens, as well as a possible rotating stage for sequential imaging of multiple embryos at once.

Abstract: The project aims to design, test, and build a Universal Transducer Adapter (UTA) to use in conjunction with commercially available Ultrasound Systems and the Euclid™ Tier 1 Mini Access System designed by Houston Medical Robotics (HMR). The UTA is a much needed design improvement to the Euclid™ system because of the time and financial cost associated with redesigning the adapter for different commercially available ultrasound systems. Multiple design concepts will be presented and tested both in benchtop and animal models and the necessary design documentation will be completed throughout this process. Secondarily, the Euclid™ Tier 1 Mini Base will be ergonomically redesigned for customer ease of use.

Project 4: Lupus Biomarkers

Abstract: The goal of this project is to identify Lupus biomarkers that will be used in a sensor to track the progress of Lupus in a diagnosed patient. Lupus is a systemic autoimmune disease that often results in kidney failure. By tracking the proteins that are filtered through the kidney, it is possible to identify protein biomarkers that are involved in this kidney damage. In order to achieve this goal, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) will be run on urine samples of Lupus patients that will identify those protein biomarkers that have a statistically higher protein concentration compared to patients who are not diagnosed with Lupus. After these biomarkers are identified, a sensor can be created that will evaluate the concentration of these proteins in a urine sample. This sensor can be used in a at home diagnostic kit that can allow a patient to track the progress of their disease without going to the doctor. If the sensor produces alarming results, the patient can then visit the doctor to reevaluate their treatment plan.

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Engineering Project Showcase Highlights Senior Capstone Design Projects

May 6, 2024 By Danielle Sullivan

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• Current Students

The 12th annual Engineering Project Showcase at Texas A&M University included over 300 teams of 1,400 students presenting their senior capstone design projects and competing for top prizes. The event, which was hosted at the Zachry Engineering Education Complex, brought together 170 industry judges to observe a year's worth of dedicated work and innovation.

The showcase highlighted the collaborative efforts between academia and industry, with students addressing real-world challenges presented by academic departments or industry sponsors. These challenges formed the basis for projects aimed at tackling pressing issues across various sectors. Magdalini Lagoudas, executive director of Industry/Nonprofit Partnerships, stressed the crucial role of capstone design projects in bridging theoretical knowledge with practical application.

“The Engineering Project Showcase allows us to celebrate the accomplishments of our capstone student teams and the incredible value they generate for their sponsors,” said Lagoudas. “It is also a great way for industry to see examples of successful academic partnerships with the College of Engineering.” 

Overall, the event's goals are to celebrate students' innovative solutions to real-world problems, foster engagement with industry partners and collaboration within the teams themselves, and promote STEM awareness among prospective students and educators.

"The students are very well-prepared here at the College of Engineering, and they are very impressive,” said Lynda Estes '87, an employee in the structures group at NASA. “I do a lot of mentoring of co-ops where I work and what I see here is a lot of that work getting done ahead of time, specifically with getting to work with others from different backgrounds that may not be similar to yours, but then figuring out how to divide up the work, get it done and put it all back together to create a final project. I think a skill like that is very helpful to all these students."

Beyond celebrating academic achievements and collaboration, the showcase also facilitated invaluable networking opportunities between students and industry professionals.

"Andersen Windows & Doors looks for students who are flexible, eager to learn, and want to be hands-on,” said Felicia Nguyen, a representative from Andersen Windows & Doors, a platinum sponsor. “Engineering Project Showcase allows the students to show what they have learned and what skills they can bring to our corporation. We sponsor events like this because we want students to know what Andersen does and what we bring to the table. We want to be able to give them opportunities when they get out of school to bring their talent to work with us full-time."

A highlight of the showcase was the announcement of the Overall Showcase Capstone Design Awards. Teams from diverse majors, ranging from aerospace engineering to biological and agricultural engineering, competed for top prizes. With 18 different award categories, the event’s prize pool totaled over $20,000.

Two teams tied for the Overall Showcase Capstone Design first-place award. The project Autonomous and Remote Control Operating Light (ARCOL), sponsored by Texas A&M University’s J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, addresses the challenges faced in operating rooms where frequent adjustments to surgical lighting are needed. The ARCOL system offers autonomous and remote-control capabilities to minimize disruptions during surgeries, such as shadows and obstructions. By providing a cheaper, safer, and more efficient operating environment, it aims to enhance patient care.

Sponsored by Laken Grimes and Dessert Holdings, Production Line Modeling geared their project towards streamlining the management of a production line. Inefficiencies and bottlenecks often happen with fluctuating product sequences, equipment setups, crew compositions, and processing durations. The primary objective of the project is to craft a simulation tool capable of foreseeing process challenges, furnishing feedback on schedule viability and ultimately heightening operational effectiveness.

The annual Engineering Project Showcase offers a platform for students to apply their skills in innovation and collaboration taught by Texas A&M Engineering. Join us at the next showcase to witness future projects on April 25, 2025.

The 2024 Engineering Project Showcase was sponsored by platinum sponsors, Andersen Windows & Doors and Samsung; gold sponsors, Bray Inc. and Caterpillar; and silver sponsors, Baker Hughes, Endeavor Energy Resources and H4 Architects + Engineers.

The top teams from each award category are listed below.

Engineering Project Showcase 2024 Winners: 

Overall showcase capstone award.

First place - Tie  ($2,000) Team: Autonomous and Remote Control Operating Light (ARCOL)

First place - Tie ($2,000) Team: Production Line Modeling

Third place ($1,000), sponsored by Samsung Team: OGRE Skin Test Rig

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Award

First place - Tie ($500) Team: Design and Implementation of Water Distribution and Filtration System in Remote Guatemala

First place - Tie ($500) Team: SCTHS Rainwater Harvesting

Third place ($250) Team : Kubota Tractor Lead/Lag Ratio Tire Testing

Biomedical Engineering Awards 

First place - Tie ($750), sponsored by Bray International Inc. Team: Improved Vesicoamniotic Shunt for Treatment of Fetal LUTO

Second place - Tie ($750) Team: Combined Continuous Glucose Monitor and Infusion Set  

Second place - Tie ($750) Teams : Fetal Stabilization for Fetoscopic Surgery

Computer Science and Engineering Awards 

First place - Tie ($1,000), sponsored by Andersen Windows & Doors Team : FlashMacros: Automating Calorie and Macronutrient Tracking

First place - Tie ($1,000), sponsored by Andersen Windows & Doors Team : Promenade

Second place - Tie ($750) Team : BoomBoards

Second place - Tie ($750) Team : SCRAPS

Electrical and Computer Engineering Awards 

First place ($1,000), sponsored by Samsung Team: Raytheon Drone Competition

Second place ($750) Team: RFID PC Passkey System

Third place ($500) Team: Radiation Resilient Logic Circuits

Industrial and Systems Engineering Awards

First place ($1,000), sponsored by Caterpillar Inc. Team: Calibration Lab

Second place ($750) Team: Applied Materials - Detrash/Marry-Up Area Improvement

Third place ($500) Team: CHRISTUS Health Warehouse Optimization

Material Science and Engineering Awards  

First place ($500) Team: Sealing the Deal for Hydrogen Fuel: Characterizing Elastomeric Sealing Materials for High Pressure Hydrogen Environments 

Second place ($350) Team: Metal Turnings Recycling Through ECAE

Third place ($250) Team : Design and Evaluation of Novel Recycling Methods for Coated Polymeric Automotive Components

Mechanical Engineering Awards 

First place ($1,000), sponsored by Andersen Windows & Doors Team: Continuous Cement Mixing Head Redesign

Second place - Tie ($750) Team: Parking Alert Service Project

Second place - Tie ($750) Team: Pipeline Displacement Detection Unit

Mechanical Manufacturing Engineering Technology Award 

First place ($500)

Team: The Destabilizer

Second place ($350)

Team: Team GDMAN - Automated Camera System  

Third place ($250) 

Team: Fluid Powered Vehicle

Energy Sector Award

Prize Amount: $250 Team: Predicting & Optimizing the Power Performance of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells Using Machine Learning Techniques

Health Sector Award

Prize Amount: $250 Team: Improved Vesicoamniotic Shunt for Treatment of Fetal LUTO

Infrastructure Sector Award

Prize Amount: $250 Team: Alternate Route Study

Manufacturing Sector Award

Prize Amount: $250 Team: Team Metal Turnings Recycling Through ECAE

National Security Sector Award

Prize Amount: $250 Team: Crypto-Analysis Resistant Digital Key FOB

Large Capstone Team Award

Prize Amount: $1,000 Team: LHIVA: Long-Range Hybrid eVTOL Integrated Assembly

Non-capstone Team Award

Prize Amount: $1,000 Team: RASC-AL 2024: Large-Scale Lunar Crater Prospector

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MSU Extension AgrAbility

Agrability mechanical engineering capstone project designs portable swarm trap lifter for veteran beekeeper.

Samantha Wolfe <[email protected]> , Michigan State University Extension - May 08, 2024

During the Spring 2024 Design Day, mechanical engineering seniors presented their portable swarm trap hive lifter, which they referred to as the Bee Environment Elevation System (BEES).

On April 19, 2024, members of the Mechanical Engineering Design capstone course at Michigan State University presented their design for a portable swarm trap lifter. The equipment was created for AgrAbility client and Heroes to Hives program instructor, Gary Brown, who has a back injury that limits his ability to climb a ladder or move heavy equipment.

“We chose this project because we knew that it would have a community impact,” Bennett Guensche of Grand Rapids said. “Our team wanted to do something that would benefit the user well beyond the end of the semester.” The team was comprised of Guensche, along with Bradley Haskin, Amanda Jeffers, Brandon Roux, and Daniel Staal. None of the students had any prior experience with beekeeping or AgrAbility.

Working directly with AgrAbility staff, MSU Extension staff, and the client, the student team learned about swarms and the unique context for swarm traps. From there, they designed the swarm trap lifter, which is portable and operates with the help of a battery-powered winch system that raises the trap from three to seven feet. From there, the user can slide the swarm trap off the shelf and onto a nail already in place on the tree or take down the swarm trap to relocate a honey bee swarm into a hive. The students also created a document with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to build the swarm trap lifter and where to procure supplies, simplifying the process for anyone who may be interested in recreating their design for their own operation.

The team also ensured that the design was financially accessible; Guensche commented that building the device out of wood was challenging for their team but because the average beekeeper would not have access to the machining equipment in their class, they had to work within that parameter to keep the design simple and inexpensive. Materials for the portable swarm trap lifter cost between $300 and $400, depending on whether the beekeeper decides to utilize an electric winch or a hand crank system to raise and lower the platform. Overall, the design costs about 10x less than typical electric lifters found online. Soon after the event, the design team delivered the finished product to the AgrAbility client.

“He was very pleased to see that all it required was the press of a button to lift and lower the box,” Guensche said. “We fulfilled all his wants and needs with the device. We showed it to him at his local VFW post where he has a few bee hives in the back. This is also where he does his bee classes and teaches others how to bee keep. He brought out his box with him so we could test it with the real thing. That was the first time we ever tested it on dirt, and we were pleased to see that it still functioned as intended and the lifter was stable.”

“It was a great project for them, and I feel that they had some great head scratches during the development of the Swarm Trap Lifter,” Brown said.

AgrAbility has sponsored 22 mechanical engineering capstone projects since 2015. Past projects include an automatic gate opener, a folding tractor step, an outdoor wood furnace loader, and other beekeeping equipment that alleviate lifting constraints. These assistive technologies have helped improve quality of life for numerous AgrAbility clients. In 2023, the program assisted 215 clients across the state. The mission of AgrAbility is to improve the quality of life for farmers with a disability, injury, or illness through direct technical assistance and implementation of assistive technology on the farm to simplify tasks and keep people farming.

AgrAbility is a U.S. Department of Agriculture -funded program that assists farmers with a disability, illness, or injury, and in Michigan it’s operated as a partnership between Michigan State University and EastersealsMORC . Design Day is the culmination of a semester-long capstone course for all engineering students and provides an opportunity for students to “use the technical expertise, communication skills, and teaming methodologies… to solve real world problems,” according to the 2024 Design Day booklet . (See page 142 for the AgrAbility project.)      

This project was supported by the AgrAbility Competitive Program of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), grant number 2014-41590-22327. It was also supported by the Enhancing Agricultural Opportunities for Military Veterans grant, award no. 2021-77028-35274 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension . For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu . To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters . To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts , or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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Students present posters for IE431 capstone projects - School of Industrial Engineering - Purdue University

Students present posters for IE431 capstone projects

They showcased their work at the IE 431 Poster Session & Company Day on April 18th. Thirty-seven projects, each involving the collaborative work of five or more students, were featured in the Co-Rec’s Black and Gold gym. Projects came from a variety of industries with clients ranging from nonprofit organizations to businesses headquartered across the United States. Along with the opportunity to display their work to their community, teams at the session competed for top prizes and the People’s Choice Award.   

The first-place award went to Team 12 for their work with Lafayette Food Finders Food Bank. The team created an Excel dashboard that allows the operations team to visualize key performance metrics and make data-driven decisions. Team members Nick Alfano, Michelle Chen, Jack Feenstra, Halle Lin, and Mitchell Rose developed their project management skills, coding abilities, and usability design techniques to create a comprehensive dashboard that exceeded client expectations. “Winning first place was so meaningful because it recognized both the hard work of the team on the project and the dedication to our overarching goal of supporting the community,” the team states. “ We’ve developed a solution poised to foster greater equity in food distribution across all 16 counties served by Food Finders. We’re so happy and excited about its potential to expand into a model for food banks nationwide.”  

Second place was awarded to Team 8 for their work with Eagle Materials, Inc. Members Mohamed (Mo) Abuelreish , Anvi Arora, John Aspinall, Emma Conklin-Yokel, Kaleb Peters, and Sofia Vonder Haar were tasked with evaluating alternative fuel types for the company’s ready mix trucks that deliver concrete to various construction sites. The team suggested compressed natural gas as an alternative fuel type for a better return on investment and carbon dioxide reduction. They describe the process of working with their client as incredibly rewarding. “Eagle Materials paired the team with fantastic mentors that assisted in ensuring the team was on track,” says Anvi. Emma, who will soon be working in manufacturing with Procter & Gamble, says that the project prepared the team well for experience in industry, especially in the solution exploration process. After graduation, the team members plan on entering a variety of fields, including semiconductors, soda, and consumer packaged goods.  

The third-place prize went to Team 9, also for their work with Eagle Materials. Matthew Novreske , Jack Perrotta, Sergio Monge, Aditya Ram Vijendran and Raece Oakeson were asked to develop a site map that shows the optimum stockpile layout for raw materials inventory in a covered storage area. The team created site plans and paths for trucks to unload raw material in specific geometric patterns that would allow for prioritization of old inventory.  

The People’s Choice Award, decided by community vote, was given to Team 19 for their work with the Lafayette School Corporation’s transportation system. The team, including seniors Kirsten Brutans , Kendall Kelly, Madeline McNarney , Olivia Murchie, and Andrew Rentz, analyzed and compiled helpful resources for the corporation to provide more effective and efficient bus operations.  

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Real-World Business challenges

In the Applied Management Research (AMR) field study, you’ll work on a team to address a challenge for a client organization. After a deep dive into research, you’ll present key insights and your recommendations. The Business Creation Option gives you the chance to work with a team of classmates to launch your own business. Students who participate in the Student Investment Fund (SIF) manage a $2 million fund, while visiting leading companies to learn about strategies and philosophies. The Anderson Strategy Group (ASG) is a capstone project that involves a commitment during your first and second years, and gives students focused on consulting a chance to work on and manage a project with classmates. Students who participate in the NAIOP Real Estate Case Competition earn capstone project credit through this six-month assessment of a local property, determining the highest and best use for real estate development. Finally, Anderson has partnered with XPRIZE and their Visioneers program to put students on the front line of designing XPRIZE competitions to address the world’s grand challenges.

In this field study, you’ll work in a team to address a challenge for a client organization. After a deep dive into research, you’ll present key insights and your recommendations.

Bcp gives you the chance to work with a team of classmates to launch your own business., this set of capstone options is more tailored to students' various career paths and interests, and includes: global social impact consulting entertainment & sports analytics early stage investing a/b testing marketing behavior change in marketing.

Students who participate in SIF manage a $2 million fund, while visiting leading companies to learn about strategies and philosophies.  

ASG is a capstone project that involves a commitment during your first and second years, and gives students focused on consulting a chance to work on and manage a project with classmates.

Students who participate in the NAIOP case competition earn capstone project credit through this six-month assessment of a local property.

• Team determines best use for a real site in Southern California
• Case competition against USC + write up
• Fall & Winter quarter of second year

Visit Ziman Center

NEWS RELEASE:

UCLA Excels in Local and National Real Estate Case Competitions

Los Angeles (November 20, 2018) — UCLA graduate student teams won the 2018 NAIOP SoCal Real Estate Challenge and placed second in the 2018 National Real Estate Challenge hosted by the University of Texas at Austin. Both case competitions took place on November 15, 2018, at UCLA and UT Austin, respectively.

NAIOP team (left to right): UCLA Anderson Professor Paul Habibi, Jeffrey Eigenbrood (’19), Daniel Polk (’19), Ben Morrison (’19), Robert Anthony (’19), Nicholas Marino (’19)

The NAIOP SoCal Real Estate Challenge team consisted of Class of 2019 UCLA Anderson MBA students Robert Anthony , Jeff Eigenbrood , Nick Marino and Ben Morrison , and UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture student Daniel Polk. The annual event, sponsored by the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), presents a specific real estate case challenge to a team of students at UCLA and USC. In addition to providing a rich learning experience that requires participating students to produce high-quality professional work within a limited time frame, the competition is designed to showcase the talents and creativity of the next generation of real estate professionals.

This year, the NAIOP Challenge involved two undeveloped parcels on 11 acres of land located at the southwest corner of Del Amo Avenue and Newport Avenue in Tustin, California. The city acquired the property in 2007 and it has been vacant since that time. The site is a highly visible infill adjacent to the 55 freeway and near the massive Tustin Legacy, the 1600-acre former Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, which is currently being redeveloped. The site sits in an area of the Pacific Center East Specific Plan, which is a major employment center in Tustin that will continue to grow.

UCLA’s team proposed a project they titled Solana (Spanish for solarium or sunny spot) that was inspired by strawberry farming that had once taken place on the site. Solana is a natural extension of the nearby Tustin Legacy project, which involves the transformation of 16,000 acres of raw land into a massive master-planned commercial and residential community.

Video fly-through of the UCLA NAIOP “Solano – Tustin” Development

UCLA’s Solana consists of two select service hotels (305 keys), 240 multifamily units, 10,000 square feet of retail, 75 units of 80 percent affordable housing and more than 150,000 square feet of community space. “I am enormously proud of our NAIOP Challenge team,” said Tim Kawahara, executive director of the Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA. “Our students proposed a very thoughtful project that provides both commercial value and community benefits to the City of Tustin.”

In its 21st year, the NAIOP Real Estate Challenge celebrates the rivalry between USC and UCLA and illustrates the robust real estate programs at both universities. The winning team is awarded the Silver Shovel, which is inscribed with all past winners’ names. In addition, a $5,000 contribution is made in the name of the winning school to the Challenge for Charity (C4C), benefiting the Special Olympics.

National Real Estate Challenge team (left to right): DaJuan Bennett (’20), Austen Mount (’20), Anne Sewall (’20), James Blake (’20), Robert Walls (’20)

The National Real Estate Challenge team from UCLA consisted of Class of 2020 UCLA Anderson MBA students DaJuan Bennett , James Blake , Austen Mount , Anne M. Sewall and Robert Walls . The challenge, held annually at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin, is an invitation-only case competition for student teams from the nation’s top-ranked business schools. The case competition involves the analysis of a recent real estate transaction consummated by a leading global real estate firm. Judging panels consist of senior executives from leading real estate companies across the U.S., creating outstanding opportunities for learning, networking and recruitment.

This year, the case centered on a hold/sell analysis for a recently delivered, eight-story office building in “River Valley” (later revealed to be Austin, TX). The property had been a successful 80-percent leased development for the fund. Teams were given the following options: sell the building immediately; hold on to the property with the existing debt; re-finance the property at a higher leverage point (either 65 or 75 percent LTV instead of the 50 percent LTC loan in place); or sell the property and use the proceeds to pursue another office development in “West Hamilton” (later revealed to be Santa Monica, CA). Student teams were prompted to model the two investments to determine the quantitative benefits of each option, but also to look at the national office market, consider the impact of interest rates on cap rates and determine whether co-working and remote working would impact leasing either of the projects.

The UCLA team recommended holding on to the existing property and refinancing the building at 65 percent LTV. The thought process was, while the base case scenario provided was likely to occur, the team wanted to ensure a comfort level with the investment in a downside scenario, which made the pipeline investment and 75 percent LTV financing options too risky. Conversely, the team suggested that selling the property now or maintaining the 50 percent LTC loan were too conservative given the quality of the property and the strength of the “River Valley” market.

“The UT Austin McCombs School of Business National Real Estate Challenge is among the most prestigious real estate case competitions in the nation, so even to place is a huge accomplishment,” said Tim Kawahara. “The team’s success represents the caliber of students at UCLA Anderson and the strength of our real estate curriculum and programs.”

An investment fund managed by student portfolio managers dedicated to the pursuit of favorable risk-adjusted returns.

Applied Management Research

We pioneered practical learning with the applied management research program.

UCLA Anderson launched the first MBA field study program 54 years ago. The AMR program has worked with over 5,000 clients, including Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, microfinance institutions and startups. You’ll work with a team of peers on a two-quarter project that will solve an organization’s key business problem, while expanding your professional network and experience working in a new field, and inviting you to explore your career options. The AMR program takes place during fall and winter quarters of the second year.

Ballard Metcalfe (’19), Ariel Wang (’19), and Cris Erdtsieck (’19) analyzed how a Peruvian non-profit organization could maximize revenues and lower transaction costs while increasing client satisfaction and engagement.

Global Reach of AMR Projects in 2019–2020

Project Industries

Student impressions of amr.

From The Blog

Sustaining Effective NCD Screen in a South Africa community Requires an Ecosystem of Strategic Partners

Improving the Quality of Sustainable Coffee Production in San Martín, Peru

Prestigious Awards for UCLA Anderson Class of 2017 Field Study Teams

BCP Team KPOP Foods (clockwise from top left): Alex Kim (’17), Ryan Kennelly (’17), Mike Kim (’17), Theo Lee (’17), Erica Suk (’17).

BCP Success Stories

BodySpec (Class of 2014)

BodySpec provides individualized information to health-conscious individuals. We offer full-body scans utilizing dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scanning technology.

Project Description: BodySpec provides individualized health information to health-conscious individuals. We offer full-body scans utilizing dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scanning technology. These scans provide data about an individual’s muscle mass, body fat and bone density at a more granular, accurate and actionable level than any other body composition technology currently available in the fitness industry. Revenue will primarily be generated through scanning fees from individuals (an average of $90 per scan) and subscription fees from personal trainers to access client data.

Update: BCO project is thriving. They've hit many significant milestones and are enthusiastic about BodySpec and helping out current Anderson students.

SmartestK12 (Class of 2014)

To help teachers better understand their students, SmartestK12 transforms all assignments, assessments or classroom interactions into rich student data that allows teachers, parents and school administrators to track each child’s learning in real time and take actions to ensure academic growth.

SMARTESTK12 (CLASS OF 2014)

Project Description: To help teachers better understand their students, SmartestK12 transforms all assignments, assessments or classroom interactions into rich student data that allows teachers, parents and school administrators to track each child’s learning in real time and take actions to ensure academic growth. We feel that education is the foundation for human progress, and that each student deserves an education custom built to her or his needs. SmartestK12 aims to unleash the individual and create a sustainable, never-ending supply of future scientists, historians, mathematicians, authors, scholars and creative geniuses.

Update: The company is still up and running, rebranded as Formative for a new application the founders created that is proving very promising.

Sportifik (Class of 2014)

Sportifik is a web- and mobile-based league management platform that engages college students in recreational activities. Adopted by over 25 universities across the country, including UCLA, Stanford and UC Berkeley, Sportifik empowers university recreation programs with the ability to effectively coordinate sports leagues and tournaments and engage students in healthy and active lifestyles.

SPORTIFIK (CLASS OF 2014)

Project Description:  Sportifik is creating a community of athletes and changing the way people participate in sports. We are providing amateur athletes and avid sports fans with the best means to easily organize and manage their sporting activities through a user friendly one-stop-shop mobile and web solution. Our platform will enable users to seamlessly partake in sporting activities in a fun and rewarding way while enabling them to meet members of their local communities who share a passion for the same sports.

Update:  Still working on their startup and the project is ongoing in LA. They've raised a seed round, grown their user base and client base significantly. They’re still implementing the pivot they started during BCO and are looking to add another part to their project.

Student entrepreneur taps into UCLA resources to 'grow' his news website

No Guesswork, No Guilt: Goodbye Hangry, Hello officebites

AMR: Business Creation Option (BCP) Spotlight on GOshopping

BCP Mentors

Internet, Business and Intellectual Property Attorney Cohen Business Law Group

Investor Upfront Ventures

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College of Engineering

LSU Electrical, Computer Engineering Seniors Design Virtual Lab for Remote Experiments

BATON ROUGE, LA – As part of their senior capstone project, four LSU Electrical and Computer Engineering seniors designed a virtual lab that will allow LSU Mechanical Engineering students to conduct pipe-flow experiments from a remote location. The project’s sponsor, LSU Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department Chair and Professor Dimitris Nikitopoulos, thought of the project when students were stuck at home during the pandemic. The group’s efforts are funded by Chevron.

“Dr. Nik and Chevron’s goal was for a digital transformation in academics,” said LSU ECE senior Toby Limcango of Covington. “Because of the pandemic, they wanted to be able to have students learn in school or at home.”

Limcango, along with teammates Willie Moore of New Orleans; Preston Guedry of Kenner, La.; and Vy Le of Vietnam are building upon a previously completed senior design project.

“Our goal is to improve what the previous team completed and fully simulate the physical lab experiment for mechanical engineering students,” Moore said. “They can do it virtually, as long as they have the provided headset, the standalone Unity VR app, and an internet connection. Anyone can do it by themselves.”

Students using the app and headset can read the supporting lab manual, open and close solenoid valves to test pressure differentials in water, press buttons to record values, and more. The recorded data goes to their data engine and returns data that the student can then use and analyze.

“It would work the same in a real lab,” Guedry said. “The student can type in their email and send themselves a copy of it. There are also apps you can access. You can open valves, submit the flow rate, and get data back from the data engine, which runs on a 24/7 cloud service called PythonAnywhere.”

The team changed the VR implementation to include continuous movement rather than rapid, quick turns to prevent dizziness and allow the user to move around freely.

“We wanted to take this project to the next level,” Moore said. “We faced some challenges, such as learning a new programming language, game development, and data analytics. It was a lot of research, but once we learned how to analyze that research and implement it, it was fine.”

On the VR side, the team says they composed a lot of C# scripts, adding the respective functions for all of the virtual labs interactables.  

“Each of the things you see me doing [in the virtual lab] is a type of script that went along with it to make that function,” Guedry said. “So, we definitely had a lot to do. Toby and I developed the VR experience, so that was a lot of late nights.”

The technology used in the project could be used in industry and prove beneficial in petroleum, chemical or mechanical engineering.

“This technology could be used in oil and gas or aerospace and defense,” Moore said. “A lot of those engineers must go into the field to be trained and test various functions, which can lead to messing up equipment and even downtime, which can negatively affect a company’s revenue. Being able to interact with these types of systems in VR and not breaking equipment in a physical space can definitely be a benefit.”

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Contact: Libby Haydel Communications Manager 225-578-4840 [email protected]

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ECE 2024 Capstone Design Fair highlights, part 1: Improving the battery system for neural implants

MAY 13, 2024 • By Matthew Tierney

In April, ECE’s fourth-year undergraduate students showcased their team-based projects at the 2024 Capstone Design Fair, held over three nights in the Myhal Centre.

Capstone is a yearlong project design course (ECE496) that asks the students to develop an initial concept into a working prototype. This year, coordinator Professor  Bruno Korst  says the department incorporated industry reporting processes to better mirror what students can expect in the workplace.

“I conducted multiple interviews with former students and hired two project administrators who currently work in industry. They all said written reports have given way to brief meetings on deliverables — what’s been done, what’s up next — and then everyone moves on.

“So we simplified the documentation for the students and had stand-up meetings over the two semesters. It set an industry pace, which meant that the students had to pick it up. You can see it in the results this year, which to my eye are more focused.”

“Developing a working engineering prototype requires a combination of teamwork, dedication and the application of a variety of ECE skills acquired from our classrooms and labs,” says ECE Chair Professor  Deepa Kundur .   “Each year, it’s inspiring to see how much the students have learned and their pride in their projects. The design fair is one of the highlights in our academic year.”

This Capstone team project highlight is part 1 of 3.

Next up, part 2: guiding consumers with an app that accurately shows prescriptive lens in frames, part 1: wireless power transfer to multiple implantable neurological devices.

Deep-brain stimulation is a therapeutic procedure that can help with the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. It involves implants in the brain, which deliver pulses of electric current to specific areas.

The team of Selena Liu , Aurora Nowicki and Kimberley Orna (all Year 4 ElecE) developed a way to improve the battery system that powers those implants. Their Capstone project was mentored by Mohammad Abdolrazzaghi (ECE PhD candidate), a member of ECE professor Roman Genov ’s lab, and it also received support from ECE professor George Eleftheriades . The project received the John W. Senders Award for Imaginative Design.

“The state of the technology right now requires patients to have a battery pack implanted beneath their collarbone, with implanted electrodes and wires that run through their neck,” says Nowicki. “They need to get this battery replaced every five or seven years. It’s very invasive.”

But what if one could power the implants wirelessly?

“When people think of wireless charging, they often picture the inductive power transfer of an electric toothbrush or phone,” says Nowicki.

“But that only works when the distance is less than five centimetres,” Liu says, “and it’s not precise enough for our purposes. We used what’s called far-field or power beaming, which is how your cell phone communicates with a cell tower, in the radio frequency.”

The team’s solution incorporated an antenna array worn around the patient’s head.

“We send power that’s specifically conditioned — by that, I mean we shift the phase and change the amplitude — to six different antennas on a headband,” says Orna. “That enables the antennas to beam power into the head at a very precise location.”

The power is controlled by a graphical user interface (GUI) they built using Python. It offers two modes of operation to the clinician: automatic and manual. Automatic mode adjusts the six different waveforms into an interference pattern that targets the x-y-z location of the implant as inputted in the GUI. Manual mode gives clinicians some therapeutic options by allowing them to manipulate the power or temporal delay of each waveform.

“A real advantage for our solution versus electrodes, which don’t move once they’re implanted, is when the patient has multiple devices in the brain. The clinician would be able to control an exact power transfer to the x-y-z location of each one,” says Liu.

To demo their proof of concept, they successfully lit up LED lights as stand-in implants in a model head filled with solution that simulates cerebrospinal fluid.

The team miniaturized the integrated system — the microcontroller, the radio frequency synthesizer, signal generator, and amplifier — into a printed circuit board that fit a 3D-printed housing case about the size of a phone. The case is small enough to either be strapped to the headband or worn as a fanny pack.

Even though Capstone is now over, their ambitions for the project are not.

“Our hope to get this PCB manufactured so that we can test at the frequency of 950 MHz, which is a frequency that is safe for sending power into the brain, at high efficiency, that minimizes any heat losses,” says Liu.

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