Engineering Students Lauded

While scores of College seniors turned in hundred-page theses, over a dozen engineering students dazzled a panel of faculty judges last week with final projects that may just change the face of the sciences.

The Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences held its Senior Engineering Design Project Awards Ceremony last Friday for seniors enrolled in two engineering design project courses.

William J. Adams Jr. ’06 nabbed a first-place finish for his microelectrode array for in vitro cardiac electrophysiological experimentation, which is a “device used to measure extracellular potential of cultured heart cells,” according to Adams.

“In a sense, it is just like an [Electrocardiogram], but instead of looking at the entire heart, it takes electrical measurements from a single cell,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Kevin “Kit” Parker, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, said that Adams’ project is “stunning.”

Parker, who advised Adams, said he witnessed him work at “warped speed” for six months, from initial tissue engineering to creating the original design of the device to microfabricating it in the University’s Center for Nanoscale Systems cleanroom.

Parker praised the project as a “tour de force of engineering—far beyond what we train.”

Chelsea S. Simmons ’06 and Robert J. Everett ’06 tied for second place, applying their engineering skills to create projects that would improve surgical techniques.

Working with DePuy Spine, a Massachusetts-based company dedicated to the manufacture of orthopedic devices, Simmons developed a pedicle screw system for osteoporotic bone, what McKay Professor of Engineering Robert D. Howe calls “an amazingly original idea.”

This device would be used in patients who undergo spinal fusion, the most common surgical remedy for back pain, according to Simmons’ abstract.

Because older patients often suffer from low bone density, the expanding screw would go into the vertebral body, creating a system with a greater holding capacity, she wrote in her abstract.

Everett, who also placed second, collaborated with knee-injury specialists to improve testing for tendon graft orientation in injured knees. His device, which automates the testing process and makes it more dependable, is “about the most finished project I’ve seen in the fifteen years I’ve been working with this class,” Howe said.

Parker said that these projects are “right[s] of passage to being a professional engineer. As a professional engineer it’s what you do—you solve problems.”

All three winners won a brand new multimeter, an electronic measuring instrument.

According to Adams, “Winning the multimeter is awesome, you never know when you might all of a sudden desperately need one around the house.”