Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Try

There’s no substitute for hands-on experience, especially for engineers-to-be. That’s why the senior capstone design courses, in which UMD engineering students shepherd projects from concept to product, are so critical.

“It’s often the best experience of their studies,” says Professor Gil Blankenship, associate chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “They are young, enthusiastic and fearless. They’ll try almost anything.”

These efforts will get a boost with A. James Clark Hall, under construction next to the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building and scheduled to open in 2017. Besides classrooms and maker spaces, it will feature the Innovation Lab, offering at least 19 undergraduate labs along with an electronics shop and machine shop; InTerp Suites, with dedicated office space and venture creation resources for startups; and the Fab Lab, a rapid prototyping area that will enable design through on-site production of parts and materials.

The facility, home to the Fischell Department of Bioengineering and the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, will bring together students, faculty, medical practitioners, entrepreneurs and regulators to design and build the next generation of health-care technologies and get them into the marketplace.

Take a look at some recent projects from UMD students:

UMD students who built this planetary rover prototype beat seven other universities’ teams to win the 2015 RASC-AL Exploration Robo-Ops Competition sponsored by NASA and organized by the National Institute of Aerospace. The robot, dubbed “Frigg” (pictured left with team member Lemuel Carpenter ’15), underwent field tests at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston—while being remotely controlled at a College Park “mission control.” The rover also set a new course record.

Safety shouldn’t be sacrificed for convenience, and six students and recent graduates are working to make clunky bike helmets both more portable and resilient. They started out trying to make a better collapsible bike helmet and wound up looking at polyurea, a material that helps the military reduce explosive impacts. They found it tests well for reducing concussions and seek to integrate polyurea into their detachable design, which separates a helmet into different layers and binds them back together like ski boot straps. Now they’re working with advisers to commercialize the device. “It’s definitely all in the works,” says Nathanael Carriere ’15.

Finding a patient’s pulse following a heart attack can be challenging for emergency workers, from locating the right place on the wrist in a moving ambulance to distinguishing the patient’s pumping blood from your own ramped-up heartbeat. Stefanie Cohen ’14, M.Eng. ’16 was on a team that designed an ultrasound patch that could be placed over a patient’s carotid artery and provide hands-free pulse monitoring en route to the hospital. Cohen says the project gave her and colleague Shawn Greenspan ’14, M. Eng. ’16 valuable insight into the medical industry. “I can apply that to medical devices or if I choose to do some other field.”