2012-2013: In collaboration with HyGround Engineering and the Williamsburg Highway Department, this student team designed a replacement structure for the culvert on Depot Road in Williamsburg, MA, and proposed a realignment design for the road. Depot Road floods frequently as…
Design Improvements for a Ceramic Water Filter for Use in Nepal
2012-2013: In collaboration with iDE Nepal, this student team developed design improvements for iDE Nepal’s existing household ceramic water filter. Clean water is central to iDE’s mission to improve global health through small business development; iDE Nepal seeks to improve…
Design and Development of an Algorithm to Identify Targets from Bistatic Radar Data
2012-2013: In collaboration with the MITRE Corporation, this student team developed an algorithm to detect targets using data from a passive bistatic radar system. Radar technologies have the potential to be an integral part of building security and surveillance. After gaining…
Restoration Design for Barros Bog in Bourne, MA
2012-2013: In collaboration with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), this student team developed a plan to restore the abandoned Barros Cranberry Bog in Bourne, MA to its historic salt marsh hydrology. A primary motivation for this project was to…
Inventory of Green Infrastructure Opportunities and Retrofit Designs for Stormwater Management
2012-2013: In collaboration with the Northampton Department of Public Works (DPW), this student team developed resources and designs to integrate green infrastructure into the City’s stormwater management program. Green infrastructure is an environmentally sustainable method of managing stormwater on site,…
Prediction of Cooling Fin Erosion and Design of Improvements to Reduce Damage
2012-2013: In collaboration with United Technologies Aerospace Systems (UTAS), this student team analyzed fin behavior within aircraft heat exchangers and redesigned the current retrofit that UTAS uses to prevent fin damage. The motivation for this project was to predict when…
Design Improvement of Off-Highway Truck Frame Components
2011-2012: In collaboration with Caterpillar, this student team developed and recommended design improvements for the frame of Caterpillar’s 773/775 G-series off-highway trucks. The project goal was to reduce weight and/or cost of the frame components without sacrificing durability or aesthetics.…
Design of a Rapid Deployment Water Purification System
2011-2012: In collaboration with fourteen engineering students at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) and with support from the Department of Defense, this student team designed and built an easily deployable and portable water purification system for use by U.S.…
Design of a Device to Detect Acidosis/Alkalosis in Diabetics
2011-2012: In collaboration with four engineering students at Marquette University, this entrepreneurial student team designed and built a proof-of-concept device to detect acidosis or alkalosis in sleeping patients. Acidosis and alkalosis are conditions that result from increased acid or alkali…
Design of an Organic Waste Digestion and Composting Facility
2011-2012: In collaboration with Fuss & O’Neill, this student team designed a non-site-specific anaerobic digestion (AD) facility for converting source-separated organic waste into compost and electricity. The motivation for the project is recent Connecticut legislation that requires large generators of…
Design of a Treatment System for Silage Leachate
2011-2012: In collaboration with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, this student team developed a treatment system for silage leachate for a small dairy farm in Massachusetts. Silage is a high-moisture forage material preserved through fermentation and often used as food…
Design and Development of a High-Elongation Strain Gage for Medical Applications
2011-2012: In collaboration with Protopeutics, this student team improved and characterized the design of a high-elongation strain gage. The application is in the field of dermally-applied sensors and treatment in outpatient rehabilitation; the goal is to record range of motion…
Design of an Automated, Rapid, Tissue Processing System
2010-2011: In collaboration with Energy Beam Sciences (EBS), this student team designed automation components of a microwave-based tissue processing system for use in point-of-care facilities. The goal of the final system is to reduce both the time and cost of…
Design Foundations for Climate Change Adaptation Programs: Ecosystem Model Integration
2010-2011: In collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Goddard), this student team explored opportunities to integrate two ecosystem modeling programs, UFORE (Urban Forest Effects, a tree-level urban forestry program) and Biome-BGC (Biome-BioGeoChemistry, a biome-level process model) so as to…
Design of a Stormwater Runoff Treatment System and Development of a Stormwater Treatment Guide
2010-2011: In collaboration with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), this student team focused on stormwater remediation in Cape Cod, Massachusetts as part of the Cape Cod Water Resources Restoration Project. Stormwater runoff is a significant source of pollution for…
Evaluation and Design for Renewable Energy at the Northampton Landfill
2010-2011: In collaboration with the Northampton Department of Public Works and the Northampton Energy and Sustainability Commission, this student team evaluated the feasibility of wind, biomass crop, and solar energy on the Northampton landfill after its projected closure in 2012. …
Design of a Sparging Chamber Subsystem for Underwater Radon Surveying
2010-2011: In collaboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), this student team designed an autonomous sparging chamber subsystem as part of a larger system to measure water concentrations of radon in deep sea conditions. The goal of the initiative is…
Design of Energy Reduction Strategies for Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity
2009-2010: In collaboration with Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity (GSHfH), this student team developed design modifications to the standard GSHfH house to reduce energy consumption without significantly increasing cost or construction complexity. The team conducted an energy audit and energy…
Design of a Scalable Solar Concentrator for Use with a Solar Thermal Electricity Generation System
2009-2010: In collaboration with MIT Lincoln Laboratory, this student team designed a solar-concentrator to increase the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of solar thermal electric (STE) technology on the residential scale. Such technology already exists on the industrial scale, but has yet…
Design of a Solar-Powered Microirrigation System and Development of Design Tools for Solar-Powered Irrigation
2009-2010: In collaboration with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, this student team designed a stand-alone solar-powered microirrigation system for a two-acre farm in Westport, MA and also developed a solar-array sizing design tool to assist with the design of similar…