Ben Garbacz/Mining Gazette Around 100 teams and about a thousand students participated in the 25th annual Design Expo at Michigan Tech. Tuesday.

HOUGHTON — Michigan Tech hosted its 25th annual Design Expo Tuesday at two locations– the Van Pelt and Opie Library and in the Memorial Union Building Ballroom. The Enterprise Program’s event consisted of around 100 student teams comprised of about 1,000 engineering students who worked on the projects presented to fellow students, faculty and staff, professionals and the general public. The expo was made up of first-year student projects in the MUB while the upper classes were in the library.

Projects could be something students design to solve problems for a company, industry, professor or themselves. The event was primarily a technical conference with engineering also being accompanied by computing, cyber security, networking, computer science, software engineering and business. Judges were in attendance to select teams for best in show prizes.

“Projects could be mixtures of science, engineering, business and even humanities students that get involved at times depending on what the work is for those given projects so much more like the actual workplace with that mix of different disciplines,” Associate Director of the Enterprise Program Len Switzer said.

“We ask industry people to come here and be judges, but they’re also trying to identify maybe their next hire. So there are connections made and there’s networking that’s done.”

Its 25th year has demonstrated the growth of the expo since its inception in 2000, which went from 11 teams to 100 and from one building to two. More than 150 companies sponsor projects with Thompson Retractor acting as this year’s executive sponsor. Director of the Enterprise Program Nagesh Hatti said the 25th year of the expo is a testament of its success for students and industry partners.

“This is a fantastic event, especially for our local community and the public,” Hatti said. “If they haven’t had a chance to come up here, please do next time when it comes up and see what our students do — the innovations they put together and stuff they built. It’s pretty amazing.”

The senior portion of the expo took up two wings of the library. One of the projects showcased was a moon rover constructed by the Astro-Huskies, the lunabotics team for Michigan Tech. 44 students worked on the project to compete in NASA’s lunabotics competition. The project’s manager, Nick Miller, said this year the team has made a new steering system which features four independently powered steerable wheels which can turn to different angles independent of others.

Another senior project was from the Open Source Hardware Enterprise consisting of Ike Alafita, William Forney, Ben Keppers and Lucas Haddad. The four created a biomathmetic sensing platform designed to be as least disruptive as possible compared to other propelled vehicles and robots when searching underwater. The team developed their own acoustic communication system for the robot, and it can be controlled wired or wirelessly.

One of the freshman teams in the MUB was comprised of Andrew Palmer, Edison Bregger and Hunter Tuoriniemi. They built a prosthetic hand that was designed to be affordable to citizens of Indochina. They came up with ways to build a working prosthetic out of cheaper materials such as carbon fiber, nylon and steel cable. They were able to create some of the components with a 3D printer, which was a big factor in keeping the cost down.