HOUGHTON – From a one-man hovercraft, to a split tailgate complete with cupholders and seating, to robots for land and water, spectators at the 2015 Design Expo, held Thursday in Michigan Technological University’s Memorial Union Ballroom, got the chance to take a firsthand look at students’ hard work.

The expo featured projects from Tech’s Innovative Enterprise program, which allows first- through fourth-year students to “develop products, processes, and services within their market space,” according to the program for the event, and Senior Design, which allowed seniors to work with industry partners on open-ended projects.

Black & Veatch and Meritor sponsor cash prizes for the expo, ranging from $50 to $300, and a team of around 90 industry guests, faculty and staff, and graduate students judge the projects, according to Enterprise Program Director Mary Raber. Each team is judged by at least four judges.

“Judges are evaluating different aspects of their projects both what’s on their poster, and how they communicate their project,” Raber said.

Raber said the students seem to enjoy having the opportunity to share what they’ve done, and the event serves as a “celebration” of their work and achievements.

“When it’s all over, it just represents so much work, a whole year of work for Senior Design students, and for Enterpise teams as well,” said Kim Geiger, outreach coordinator for the College of Engineering. “They gain so much, they’re so articulate, and they present their projects so beautifully, they’ve come such a long way to get to this point. I think it’s a lot of fun to talk to them and hear what they’ve done.”

Ready for the real world: senior design projects provide industry experience

For Michigan Technological University’s seniors, the Senior Design project provides not only the opportunity to demonstrate what they’ve learned, but, in many cases, also offers students the opportunity to work with industry sponsors to develop solutions and create products.

Biomedical engineering seniors Anna Waller, Jannah Brandt and Rebecca Manshaem worked with Aspirus Keweenaw Hospital to address the challenges of enforcing hand-washing compliance, which is currently done through direct observation.

“It’s very hard for someone to take on that task, to be able to watch other healthcare workers, see if they’re washing their hands or not, and being able to do their own duties,” Brandt said. “They wanted something that they would truly know what their compliance rate is, and how they can boost that compliance rate up to 100 percent.”

The team designed a system using a microcontroller and radio frequency identification technology to track hand-washing compliance, and issue reminders if compliance is not met immediately.

“Each healthcare worker would be wearing a wristband, and when they walk through the door, they are detected by an ultra-high-frequency reader, more of a long-range reader. When they go to the sanitizing dispenser, there is a short-range reader, so they get picked up by a high-frequency tag. In that case, when they check into both, they are marked as in compliance, and that data gets stored in the system,” Manshaem said.

The group currently has proof of concept, and has run their system through several scenarios to make sure that the technology has checked out. Brandt said the stage of development reached will vary among senior project groups, and the projects tend to be fairly open-ended.

“It’s very much project-dependent,” she said.

“What they really want you to do, is they want you to make your sponsor happy. What your sponsor wants, they want you to strive for that,” Brandt said.

Samantha Kallman, a senior mechanical engineering technology major who, with her teammates Jeffrey Baker and Halley Shawbitz, was presenting an automatic loading and unloading gravity flow rack for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, described the experience as “our real first job,” and said the industry contacts were “very supportive.”

The group got to attend Chrysler’s World Class Manufacturing Academy, an opportunity normally reserved for employees.

“They’ve been there for everything,” Shawbitz said.

Real problems, real solutions: Enterprise Program students tackle industry, campus challenges

While Michigan Technological University’s Senior Design students gain experience in preparation for beginning their careers, students in the university’s Enterprise Program are getting a head start, with first-year students tackling real problems for real clients.

Rand Silvers and Tania Taff, environmental engineering majors working with Tech’s Green Campus Enterprise, said they’re working on eight projects, in teams of two, to reduce the university’s environmental impact.

“We started as simply calculating the university’s carbon footprint, and from there evolved into having different projects to reduce our footprint on campus.”

Silvers said the Green Campus Enterprise works directly with university administrators. The group’s core project is their “Clean Air-Cool Planet Campus Carbon Calculator,” which breaks down where Tech’s carbon contribution comes from he said, but other projects include campus culture, which Silvers said aims to “engage with energy users to get them to make more responsible choices.” Taff said she’s working on a project to retrofit the Great Lakes Research Center to redirect heat that’s currently being put out into the air.

Silvers said being able to present at the Design Expo helps with accountability, and the opportunity to share with others outside the group is motivating and exciting.

“We have to keep making progress on all our initiatives, if we’re going to come here and tell everybody ‘Hey, we’re making progress on all our initiatives,'” Silvers said.

“It’s also helps us to share ideas across the different boundaries of the campus,” Taff added.

Fourth-year computer Engineering major Alex Wynalda was showcasing a number of the Wireless Communication Enterprise’s projects, including a radio frequency identification bike lock, and an iBeam tour application – a project for industry sponsor Kyocera.

“It takes the new technology of iBeacons – which create a Bluetooth network – to create a campus tour for users.”

Wynalda said the application will closely resemble the tour that prospective students take when they come to campus, and has the potential to have several applications for Kyocera.

“Kyocera’s been doing all of our funding, and they want the application to the point where, when they pick it up, they can use it to not only navigate Michigan Tech’s campus, but other campuses that may be confusing make it easier for people to find out where they are, where they need to go, have printing features for physical copies for maps, and to have schedules,” he said. “All in all, it’s a convenient way of getting a lot of information on a new location.”