Stevens Institute of Technology: Admissions Blog

Designing the Future

When presented with a real-world problem, Stevens Institute of Technology students kick into gear, and not just because they're required to do so.  The Senior Projects Expo last week exemplified the reality that Stevens students not only develop the skills and knowledge to design solutions to challenging problems but that they enjoy the process!  

It was a beautiful day as faculty, staff, students, alumni, community members and friends gathered for Stevens’ annual event, a showcase of the senior year design projects of the graduating students from the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science, the Howe School of Technology Management, and the School of Systems and Enterprises.

The Expo is the culmination of the undergraduate education experience at Stevens. It allows students to apply the knowledge they have learned over four years to address a significant challenge in the areas of engineering, science, computer science, engineering management, and technology marketing and management. More than 100 groups were present at this year’s event – with outdoor exhibition space set up for the first time ever to accommodate the overflowing arena. 

"Every year, it is exciting to see the progress, teamwork, and execution of these concepts as ideas become reality," says Dr. Keith Sheppard, Associate Dean of Engineering and Science. "A number of these projects will go on in competitions, while others will make positive changes as industry applications. These students look forward to an incredible future."

The projects on display ran the gamut from alternative energy solutions to biomedical applications to innovative and efficient new vehicles. 

Team Five Guys was among the senior design teams displaying their projects in the Canavan Arena. Nyle Hammond, Edgar Barrios, Kyle Hanas, Elliot MacMillan, and Peter Yurkowski designed an interactive ordering solution for casual eating establishments, a project sponsored by Johnny Rockets, "The Original Hamburger," establishment in Hoboken, NJ. Their solution to inefficiency between front-end service and back-end management functions at restaurants that capitalize on maximizing table turnover? They designed a system that includes utilizing Apple iPads with the "Easy Pay Touch" hardware, docking stations, iOS mboile operating system software that integrates with the restaurant's POS system, and an administrative Web page. 

Essentially, they put touch-screen devices in the hands of customers, allowing them to choose and submit their orders directly to a ticketing system, generate and manage their bills, request server assistance, and split bills easily - decreasing time and error that would otherwise impede flow of service and, essentially, profits for the restaurant.

One of the groups, TEACHINS-U, worked to develop a therapeutic device for autistic children. Designed in two phases, a training phase then a hands-on phase, the acronym stands for Training and Educating Autistic Children to Help Improve Necessary Skills Unit. The Mechanical Engineering team has been receiving very positive and enthusiastic feedback to the device, according to group member Jeff Pass.

 

An Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) group created The Digital Wall Calendar, a device which will utilize a calendar-based operating system for organizing plans, meetings, and other scheduled events. They also intend for it to incorporate a custom photo feature to replicate the novelty of a traditional wall calendar.

 

The team members report that the project development was a lot smoother than they originally thought. They were able to utilize their time throughout the entire Senior Design process, completing the research early on, which made putting the final product together even easier. The team also published a QR code on their poster, drawing smart phone users to a website explaining their project. 

 

CADeyes, a Stevens Start-up company, is an advanced mobile mapping system designed to create dimensionalized site and contour maps, and as-built drawings of both the exterior and interior of building structures. The company tasked a Mechanical Engineering group with developing a mobile indoor-scanning platform for 3-dimensional mapping and visualization.

 

“We are really pleased with the way the CADeyes IntelliScan turned out,” said Ravi Javia. “The device is exactly what we expected it to be. CADeyes didn’t have a system for indoor scanning yet, so this is just what they wanted. Our group created something that delivered to their exact specifications.”

 

An Engineering Management group stayed close to Stevens for their project, working with the Athletics department on their website. They developed a highlights video package for Athletics events that would create a more interactive website experience.

 

Their display was a colorful, interactive board, complete with streaming video. Gene Kang stated that the board replicated exactly what they intend the website to look like beginning next year. Attila the Duck, Stevens’ mascot, hung out with the group at the Expo.

 

“We’re getting a lot of attention today,” said Kang. “But I think that’s because of Attila!”

 

Margaret Przeszlo, an ECE major, and her partner Kevin Fuhrman, worked on a project entitled Facemask. At the Expo, she stated: “Everything worked out so well! Last week our system crashed and we were afraid we wouldn’t have anything to show but we were able to work the glitches out. I guess that’s what Senior Design is all about, right? Real-life, real-working challenges – and finding solutions.”

 

That sentiment is definitely a recurring theme among the students.

 

"The hands-on Senior Design process is very helpful," says Biomedical Engineering student Dalia Shendi, whose "Heat Wave" Senior Design team created a portable device to re-warm patients suffering from hypothermia, with applications for both the U.S. Army and New Jersey Physicians. "Before Stevens, I had little real experience, and now I know I can research a problem, look at the market for a product, and build and test a successful prototype."

 

Alumna Mary Kelly Reflects on Experience in Haiti

When alumna Mary Kelly graduated in 2009, she launched from Stevens with more than an engineering management degree and a full-time position at the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey.  In her time at Stevens, she also developed a strong sense of community and a desire to help others, qualities that proved particularly valuable in a situation she could have never imagined and in a place far removed from her life in New Jersey.

For nearly a month, Mary volunteered in the relief efforts post last year’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti.  And in that time, she unwittingly put her engineering skills and compassion to the test, experiencing the tedious, hard work of clearing crumbled homes and schools, organizing medical relief at a hospital encampment and witnessing the resilience of a people she would have never known.

On the anniversary of this catastrophic event, Mary recounted with our staff some of the details from her days in an area in Haiti where 90% of the buildings were damaged, no government infrastructure remained, and the death toll reached between 20,000 to 30,000, according to a United Nations assessment, she reported. 

After the earthquake, Mary said it didn’t take much deliberation on her end to decide to request vacation time at work, purchase a plane ticket and connect with the non-profit group, Hands On Disaster Relief (now All Hands).   Soon after making the arrangements, she was on her way to Léogâne, a coastal Haitian city about 18 miles west of Port-Au-Prince (the epicenter of the earthquake), and one that Mary refers to as the shattered city by the sea.

“I realized that not only did I want to go, but I could.  I’m in good health, single, no children, and have the privilege of a job with vacation time,” she said. “All Hands had helped in other natural disasters, and the earthquake relief in Haiti was their biggest project. I was eager to be part of that.”  

LESSONS LEARNED

As a volunteer, Mary gave her time and energy, at times risking her own safety and comfort, coping with, for example, the aftershocks and smaller-scale earthquakes that continued to shake the area.  But she said she also received a great deal.  For one, she learned some vital lessons about life in an earthquake-torn region, some of which are expressed in the journal she shared:

 “Lesson One: Haitian patience. Upon our arrival, it was clear that patience was everything. It started with digging through two flights worth of luggage for our bags because there was no power for conveyor belts at the airport. But of course that expanded to wondering how we could help such a destroyed city in such a short amount of time. Yet after a few days removing rubble, it was clear that progress could be made, just at a much slower pace than we could have imagined. It seemed that by sheer force of will, among a street of collapsed houses, one would get cleared out and a little shelter would go up. Then shortly after, another, and so on. One wheelbarrow load at a time was slowly clearing Léogâne of rubble and giving families a place to begin building new lives.

Lesson Two: How to ‘Rubble’. ‘Rubbling’ entailed spending most of our time sledge-hammering broken schools and homes into bits small enough to shovel into wheelbarrows and then dragging them out to the street where we either crushed down the rubble to fix the roads or piled for the government workers to haul off in bigger dump trucks. My first rubbling assignment was at Pyramid School. Armed with shovels, wheelbarrows, sledge hammers and pickaxes, we would be greeted every morning without fail by the smiles and laughter of many of the children that attend the school. They worked side-by-side with us all day, every day we were there. I was even taught how to sledge-hammer by a nine-year-old boy named Orlando. After almost a week of back-breaking work, we were able to make the school safe and ready for classes to start. I don’t think I’ve ever seen kids so excited to go back to school.”

LITTLE BY LITTLE

Mary also recalled a day she was directed to help a woman whose family home – which had been steadily built and preserved over eight generations – had crumbled to ruins in the quake.  After hours and hours of rubbling, Mary asked the woman how she copes. “Knowing how long it had taken her family to build this big, beautiful home, I asked her, ‘How do you do this day after day without falling apart?  I don’t know if I could handle it like you are.’ And her answer said so much about her and maybe even the people of Haiti as a whole. She expressed to me a Creole saying, which in English translates: Little by little, the bird builds its nest,” recounted Mary. “Her answer said a lot about resilience, and it’s a something I’ll never forget.” 

All purpose and all encompassing, Mary said her work in Léogâne was simply about contributing all that she could. In addition to rubbling, she worked at a field hospital stepping in wherever needed.  In this capacity, she also used her engineering skills to develop a system for managing the hospital’s inventory, something she noticed didn’t exist, and a solution that was well-received, she said. 

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Realizing the privileges that awaited her back in the U.S., she even accelerated her efforts in the end. “Up to my last days there, I had at least been somewhat cautious and careful with my body to prevent injuries or illness.  But in the final stretch, I totally pushed myself,” she said.  “I thought, ‘I need to put in my all. Anything bad that might happen to my body, America can fix it.  I gave away my boots and some other things.  I even lost my camera somewhere along the way.  Those things seemed insignificant after experiencing what people can and do live without.”

 

 

 

 

 

Engineers Without Borders Project Updates

In the Fall of 2007, a group of five Mechanical Engineers completed a conceptual research project for a Water Purification System as their senior design. Jonathan Da Silva, Abdul Karim Dawan, Kim Fellenz, Kevin Gonzales and Emanuel Rios have optimized the system to provide clean drinking water at the lowest possible cost.

Read more about this project here.

In the Spring of 2008, a team of Chemical Engineers consisting of Barbara Korda, Amanda Rogers, Kelsea Wilks and Natalia Malantchouk will continue research begun in Spring 2007 to find an efficient source of biomass for ethanol production.

Read more about this project here.

Stevens EWB Chapter in ASCE Newsletter

Stevens' Engineers Without Borders student chapter was featured in the December newsletter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) North Jersey Branch:

Examples of types of challenging and inspiring projects that are taken on by EWB chapters can be found locally at the Stevens and NJIT student chapters. EWBSIT is currently in the process of finalizing the design for a micro-hydro electric generator, to be constructed in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic. The Jarabacoa community of El Dulce includes sixtyfive homes and one schoolhouse that currently have no source of electricity. Together with the Obra Social Salesiana (OSS), a local NGO, EWB-SIT is working to alleviate this problem by bring electrical power to the community.

EWB-SIT has already sent several students to the Jarabacoa to meet with the community and an engineer, who is an expert at designing micro hydroelectric systems in the area. While in the community, the EWBSIT team scouted a location for the systems and assessed the feasibility of providing adequate power. After the assessment trip, a feasibility study was conducted on the chosen system location to determine the characteristics of the water source, survey the surrounding land, and determine the potential power output. The Stevens team worked with the OSS and local engineers to create a design for the system components, which include: intake, penstock, powerhouse, turbine-generator, and control system. The EWB-SIT team has reached 80% of their fundraising goals for this project and currently they are finalizing design calculations so that a power generating turbine can be selected and ordered for the community. After the turbine is ordered a project team will travel to Jarabacoa to install the equipment and bring electricity to a community for the first time. For their next challenge the Stevens chapter is working on an application for a future community center/clinic in a community that is neighboring Jarabacoa.

Download the ASCE newletter (PDF) to read the full article.