Senior Design 2013
Seniors Hetty Nie, Tom Magee, Raymond Johns, Shannon Burke and Emily Miller(left to right) of team Reckitt Bensicker with their project.
It was another winning and exciting year for Bioengineering students working on their senior capstone design projects. We have been working closely with the College of Engineering Learning Factory and other departments to have multi-disciplinary teams and this year was perhaps the best so far! There were nine projects run by Bioengineering and included students from Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. Similarly Bioengineering students worked on projects run by Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Engineering Science. The projects ranged from assistive devices for disabled persons (funded through National Science Foundation, Award # 0729870 Team MEDS: Projects to Aid Persons with Disabilities) to projects for large industry to projects for Social Scientist clinicians.
Seniors Kathryn Schmiech, Christopher O'Sullivan, Jessica Steffan, Kristen Salava, and Alison Schwartz (left to right) demonstrate the robotic arm rest.
The culminating event of the semester is the Learning Factory Design Showcase which was held in the Bryce Jordan Center on April 25. Bioengineering senior Sarah Bass was on the first-place team - Robotic Parallel Bars Walking Device sponsored by Jason Moore, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. A team of five Bioengineering students, Christopher O'Sullivan, Kristen Salava, Kathryn Schmiech, Alison Schwartz, and Jessica Steffan, won a second-place prize for designing a robotic arm rest, which was sponsored by Penn State Hershey rehabilitation physician Ev Hills, MD (NSF Award # 0729870). And 3 more bioengineering students, Johnson Huynh, Sai Sunkara, and Zhentian Wei, were part of another second-place winning team which was sponsored by B. Braun Medical.
Senior Alex Bina demonstrates how the gustometer would deliver a precise amount of liquid to a patient in an fMRI.
In addition to the winning projects, another very successful project and collaboration was with Kathleen Keller, assistant professor of nutrition. She studies childhood obesity and the neural influences of taste in children. A team of bioengineering students, Brian Bacik, Alexander Bina, Joseph Hirneisen, and David Hoysan, designed a gustometer capable of accommodating pediatric subjects. A gustometer is a device that delivers a precise amount of liquid to a patient. The students designed their device using a series of independently programmable syringe pumps to delivery beverages of interest such as milk, soda and fruit juice to children who are undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It is hoped that this device will help researchers better understand the neural coding of taste and flavor and how it relates to obesity.
If you would like to learn more about the capstone design projects please visit the following websites: The Learning Factory and Bioengineering Senior Design Review.
If you are interested in sponsoring or working with Bioengineering students on a Capstone Design Project please contact, Dr. Maggie Slattery at mjs436@psu.edu or the Learning Factory Director, Dr. Mary Frecker at mxf36@psu.edu.
- Dr. Margaret Slattery, Penn State