MABE Holds First Annual Senior Design Expo
On April 21, 2016, more than 300 people filled the Thompson-Boling Arena concourse for the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering (MABE) first annual senior design expo. Thirty-seven teams of seniors participated in the expo and showed off the projects they have been working on during their final year as undergraduates.
Projects included a virtual reality forklift training system, a foot-pedaled, portable vaccine refrigerator that can be carried on a person’s back, a detachable percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube, and an aircraft fuselage cleaning system that can reduce time and injury.
Two of the teams were part of an entrepreneurial concept project called VolTank, which is modeled after the popular television series, Shark Tank. In these projects, the teams co-develop a prototype and business plan for a potential product they have conceived of.
All teams displayed posters, prototypes and gave presentations during the expo. Cash prizes were given to the top three posters, and the crowd, which included fellow classmates and company sponsors, had the opportunity to vote on their favorite project in the people’s choice award competition.
The winning teams were:
1st Place Poster Competition
- 3D Printed Brain Aneurysm Model for Aneurysm Clipping Practice
Team members: Logan Chesney, Patrick DiNicola, Morgan Howard, and Jananii Vaz
Faculty advisor: Dr. Jeff Reinbolt.
2nd Place Poster Competition
- Autonomous Material Handling
Team members: Ben Herwehe, Seth Hubler, Drew Marlow, and Turner Williamson
Faculty advisor: Dr. Bill Hamel.
3rd Place Poster Competition
- Your Omni Directional Automobile
Team members: Tesfaye Abdela, Matthew Davis, Benjamin Hardt, Ryan Klug, and Kelvin Mbugua Faculty advisor: Steve Foster.
People’s Choice Award
- VolTank: Arctic Blast
Team members: David Russell, David Priddy, Andrew Marini, and Abdulrahman Alharthi
Faculty advisor: Dr. Matthew Mench.
Fifteen industrial sponsors, including Boeing, DENSO, Eastman, Lexmark, and the National Institute of Health, funded the senior design projects.
The expo was organized by Dr. Larry Sharpe.
“The MABE senior design expo was a tremendous success. It was very impressive to see the wide array of projects completed by the mechanical, aerospace, and biomedical engineering teams. The prototypes and posters presented by the student teams showcased the hard work and effort that they put into these yearlong projects,” Sharpe said.
MABE plans to make the senior design expo an annual event. Next year’s expo is scheduled for April 27, 2017.
