Inaugural Engineering Senior Design Showcase Spotlights Problem Solvers of the Future

Stony Brook's first annual Engineering Senior Design Showcase shined a light on the university's brightest problem solvers preparing to enter the workforce.

Featuring 73 posters and 285 students, the event - held May 8 in the Student Activities Center - was a collaboration between the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, and Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Teams consisting of three to five students were mentored by a faculty member, an industry mentor or a clinical mentor with the goal of solving a real engineering problem.

"As engineers, we're committed to service to our community, and when we put our collective talents and skills together to solve a problem, we're at our best," said Andrew Singer, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "Today's event is the culmination of the work that was completed in both the fall and spring semesters of our students' senior years."

An eclectic display of projects ranged from monitors to help Parkinson's patients and navigation systems for the visually impaired to NASA vehicles and offshore wind technology.

Shanen Howard '25, biomedical engineering, was part of a team that displayed a project called "VapORsafe Alcohol Detection in the OR." It is designed to detect isopropyl alcohol in surgical settings, which can prevent surgical fires and associated risks, including lawsuits and patient harm.

"There are about 100 surgical fires every year in the US," said Howard. "It's a rare occurrence, but they still happen, and they can lead to millions of dollars in lawsuits and can disfigure or even kill patients."

Howard said that the current standard operating procedure to deal with the isopropyl alcohol in the OR is simply to wait three minutes after applying the cleaning prep.

"They wait three minutes with the drape on and hope that there's no alcohol near the spark from a tool like an electric scalpel," he said. "That's where our device comes in. If isopropyl alcohol is still present, it will alert the surgeon that there's a risk."

The team's clinical mentor was Kenneth Gow, MD, a pediatric surgeon at Stony Brook Children's Hospital and Stony Brook University Hospital.

"One of Dr. Gow's friends actually experienced a surgical fire and it disfigured a patient," said Howard. "He was passionate about addressing this, and he passed that on to us."

Alfred Burredo, '25, civil engineering, spoke of the brewery waste pretreatment system his team worked on. The project involved designing a pre-treatment facility for brewery waste at a local brewery that is currently overwhelmed with 35,000-40,000 gallons of waste daily, far exceeding its capacity.

"Some of the issues that they're facing with their current facility is that it's being overloaded by almost 20,000 gallons per day," said Burredo. "The goal of our design was to allocate and make sure that flow is being handled, along with maintaining an acceptable BOD (biochemical oxygen demand), and making sure pollutants are being removed at an appropriate efficiency."

Burredo described his team's two-stage trickling filter.

"The wastewater is allowed to flow down through a tank where there's bacteria present," he said. "It'll consume all the biological matter, and then it will be recirculated in our system, where we'll achieve a 98-percent removal of the BOD, which are the pollutants that we're looking to reduce. Another benefit of this system is that their existing facility can remain operable throughout construction so there's no additional pause for delays."

A team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering was tasked with developing a Quadcopter Drone.

"Our drone had to offer a flight time of at least 30 minutes, a range of at least 50m, weigh less than 400g, and be able to record and save videos to microSD," said Raisul Arifen'25. "We went through a lot of different components, but we achieved all of that and more."

Arifen said a drone like this would have applications for real estate agents showing properties, and in search and rescue missions.

As a benefit for giving Stony Brook engineering students an opportunity to work on actual real-world challenges, participating companies were able to get usable, viable solutions in return.

"We gave the students a project on which we needed to automate a manual test process," said Greg Myhill of Belimo, a company that produces high-end HVAC products. "We gave them the scope and left it totally up to them. They came up with an idea that we didn't know about, and they ran with it and made it happen. It was nice to end up with a solution we wouldn't have come up with on our own."

"We're thrilled with the success of our first Engineering Senior Design Showcase," said Rigoberto Burgueño, professor and chair, Department of Civil Engineering. "It exceeded our expectations and truly highlighted the creativity, problem solving, and energy of our students. It was insightful to speak with students from different departments and hear how, despite their diverse disciplines, their problem-solving approach and the lessons learned through the Capstone experience were similar. This event was a powerful reminder that our greatest asset is our students, and we look forward to making this showcase a lasting CEAS tradition."

"When we engineers put our collective talents and skills together to solve a problem, then we are at our best," added Singer. "The Engineering Senior Design Showcase was a culmination of work completed in both the Fall and Spring semesters of our students' senior years. I am proud of what they achieved with the support from their faculty mentors and industry partners, and I look forward to continuing this tradition, making it an annual event."

- Robert Emproto