Engineering Design Showcase Returns for 2022

By Holly Hinson

The Engineering Design and Innovation Showcase saw a welcome return to a full in-person event on Thursday, April 21 after three years’ absence due to COVID-19 precautions. The event is an exhibition showcasing Speed School students’ capstone design projects. More than 262 students made up the 64 engineering student teams who, throughout the semester, collaborated with their industry project partners to develop prototypes or solutions for real-world projects that involve design constraints, budgets, reviews and deadlines.

Projects are judged and awards presented in each engineering discipline: Chemical, Civil & Environmental, Electrical & Computer, Industrial, Mechanical and Interdisciplinary In addition, 372 first-year students participated in the Cornerstone Project, demonstrating their Engineering Design 111 challenges. This first-year project experience prepares students early in their academic careers for the capstone endeavor they will undertake as seniors.

“A big thrust at Speed School is preparing students to be workforce ready for industry,” said Speed School Dean Dr. Emmanuel Collins. “One of the things that excites me is to hear how some of the project outcomes are adopted by the industry sponsors,” he said. “As a community, we are developing world-class engineers who are well-prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow with competitive, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.”

“Engineering Design Showcase is a fantastic opportunity for students to showcase their work, answer questions on the fly and express their new ideas and creativity in an engineering environment,” said Dr. Thomas Rockaway, Associate Dean of Programs and Initiatives.

The gold sponsor for the event was Deloitte, a long-term partner with Speed School.  Speed School students have opportunities for co-op or employment with Deloitte in computer science and health technology solutions areas, said Deloitte Analyst Riley Hawes.

“We work frequently with the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and recruiting locally has been great for us because Speed School students come from the community and care about the community, and the results we get.”

A team from Electrical & Computer Engineering captured the second place prize in their division with their project, “PiezoElectric Rehabilitation Rocking Chair for Sensor Analysis.” The four-person team of David Crabtree, Taran Kurtz, Hunter Lewis and Thang Tuang used data analysis and circuitry design to implement soft PiezoElectric Sensors for rehabilitation applications. Their product is used to motivate the rehabilitation of spinal cord-injured children and the team analyzed the data to determine movement progression over several sessions.

“Our project was to create a device that can read the signal and wirelessly transmit it to the display,” explained Hunter Lewis. “The graphs give the children a visual representation of their movement, and because they can see it on the screen, it encourages them to move more in the chair and aids in their rehabilitation efforts.”

Chemical Engineering 3rd Place Team Buzzkill

The “Project Buzz Kill” team of Rehani Shalash, Gabrielle Smith, Honoria Stone and Kathryn VanderEspt from Chemical Engineering placed third in their division.

“Midwest Brewery approached us about the emerging non-alcoholic beer market,” said Kathryn VanderEspt. “The problem with the current method for making NA beer is that when you heat the beer to distill it to separate the ethanol you degrade the smell and taste components, and no one wants NA beer that doesn’t taste good,” she said.

The team designed a better process to separate with degrading that takes the aromatic components out before distilling, takes the ethanol out, and then adds those aromatics back in. “Not only is it better tasting NA beer, but you have this ethanol byproduct you can make into vodka or whatever,” said VanderEspt.

This was the second annual event for The Engineering Design and Innovation Showcase, a source of pride for Speed School, said Dean Collins. “As a community, we are developing world-class engineers who are well-prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow with competitive, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.”

2022 Winners