Student Design & Research

Students Design Award-Winning Solution to U.S. Navy’s Transportation Woes

The U.S. Navy often finds that its equipment gets damaged during transportation so a team of mechanical engineering majors designed a solution to protect this valuable cargo.

Together, Quintcey Parrish, Chris Ballentine, Christopher Dixon, Kyle Koren, Adam Madison, Reid Neal designed a special protective plate that provides a novel buffering solution for the Navy’s heavy equipment.

Their Scuff Protection Interface (SPI) is a plate that is half an inch thick, five inches wide, and sixty-inch long  that uses a geometric pattern to secure heavy objects together.

“Our innovative design solution was to make the plate in two sections. The top section is steel, which is welded onto the Navy equipment as a permanent fixture. The bottom section is Bearing Grade Nylon, which is a wearable and replaceable material that can be easily machined and replaced,” said Parrish.

The two sections fit together by a reciprocal patterned geometry that allows the sections to piece together without exceeding the geometric requirements. This provided a way for the Navy to secure equipment without the need for fasteners.

“The world of polymer research is an undeveloped field. We created our own testing system and conducted experiments on wear of various polymers. During the project we hit the tip of the ice berg; this research will be continued by one of our teammates next semester for a graduate level thesis.”

The team’s final project has applications beyond the Navy’s needs and can be applied to any high loading or sliding scenario’s faced by any organization that transports heavy equipment. It could even be applied to the home with windows and sliding glass doors.

“We interfaced with Lockheed Martin every week, and we presented our work to a Lieutenant Commander of the Navy at the end of each semester. Having the opportunity to work with a customer and see a project from requirements to completion has helped give us the confidence and ability required to move forward into the work force,” said Parrish.

One of the biggest surprises the team encountered was that it contradicted what they thought a mechanical engineering project would be — their final project ended up did not have any moving parts or electrical system.

“From this our team learned the importance of design, and we realized that what we build does not always have to be our final product.”

The final product ended up blowing the judges away at the 2018 Northrop Grumman Engineering and Science Student Design Showcase. Not only did they win for their category in mechanical engineering, but they also won the President’s Cup for engineering.

“This project would not have been a success without such a great team. Our team was motivated from day one to succeed, and we supported each other through the intense year. After spending a whole year together, we still spend time together despite the project being completed.”

University judges and faculty were so impressed with the project, they nominated the team to attend the 2018 Florida-Wide Student Engineering Design Invitational hosted at UCF.

The team took home “Best Invited Project” at the inaugural event.

“Upon attending the UCF showcase against other schools from across Florida, it was clear that the Florida Tech standards are high. What we (the senior design students) consider to be the normal expectation is levels above the standards that I from the other schools. We are lucky to have such great faculty and facilities promoting and challenging us to succeed.”

Identifying Molecules Involved with Infertility with Help from Starfish

Thousands of otherwise healthy men and women battle infertility, yet scientists still have no explanation as to why.  This has led scientists like Altair Dubé, Biology ’18, to study fertilization at the molecular level.

What scientists do know is that when the sperm and the egg fuse, the newly fertilized egg begins to work overtime, producing a huge amount of brand new proteins in order to divide and grow.

Thankfully, as these new proteins start to proliferate, a set of helpers are involved in this process. Known as molecular chaperones, these regulatory molecules function to mediate cellular viability by binding to proteins and ensure proper folding.

Dubé believes that understanding and finding molecular chaperones at the point of fertilization could provide a key for scientists to develop drug therapies that increase fertility.

Dubé’s student design and research project, Investigating the Housekeepers of the Cell: Molecular Chaperones at Fertilization, developed a model for identifying these molecular chaperones using starfish.

Why starfish? For one, they fertilize externally, so it provides researchers like Dubé a non-invasive way to capture eggs and fertilize them in a test tube. In addition, the starfish can carry millions of eggs at a time, so there are always plenty to work with in the lab.

Using both lab and computer-based techniques, Dubé discovered an array of new proteins in the starfish model. Through her discovery, she found that molecular chaperones may be involved during early fertilization. Dubé believes these findings can one day help us better understand human fertility at the molecular level.

“It was extremely exciting to be the first to have identified these proteins and the genes that encode them. We plan to publish this finding soon.”

It’s Dubé‘s hope that by identifying the molecular signals at fertilization, scientists can develop drugs that either inhibit or activate fertilization. This includes drugs that infertile patients could take that would be designed to increase their likelihood of successful fertilization.

“In addition, you could potentially develop non-hormonal contraceptives that have minimal side effects, unlike the contraceptives available on the market today.”

Dubé attributes much of the success of her findings to bioinformatics, which is the science of collecting and analyzing complex data to better understand biological processes. Dubé says that bioinformatics databases (like GenBank from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, SwissProt from the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics and PIR from the Protein Information Resource) enabled her to identify brand new proteins and the genes encoding them in just a matter of minutes, all at the comfort of your own computer.

“To give a helpful analogy, these databases allow us to advance from shooting an arrow in the dark and hoping to hit a target to turning the lights on and aiming directly at the target when we are trying to solve the molecular mechanisms of fertilization.”

Before Dubé made her discoveries, she joined the lab of Dr. David Carroll. Once she got into his lab sophomore year, she realized it was worth the wait.

“I had never encountered someone as passionate as Professor David Carroll was, and his excitement was contagious because before the end of sophomore year, I had completely become entranced with the biology of cells.”

Her passion, coursework, and mentorship from Dr. Carroll paid off at the 2018 Northrop Grumman Engineering and Science Student Design Showcase, where she was dubbed the “triple crown” by Florida Tech President Dr. McCay. She took home best in show for biological sciences, the Northrop Grumman Award for Science and the President’s Cup for Science.

“In my opinion, the high quality of faculty at FIT is the main component to training students how to apply their knowledge, while the Northrop Grumman Student Design Showcase is an opportunity given to students so they may learn how to communicate complex thoughts and ideas.”

Students Design Greywater Recycling System for Drought Plagued Countries

Challenged with designing a solution to a humanitarian aid issue, mechanical engineering major, Aasav Harania, has first-hand experience with an issue plaguing his home country of Kenya – water shortages.

For years, Kenyans have become used to normal drought seasons, but with climate change increasing the likelihood of droughts and increasing water costs in Africa, water recycling is in dire need.

With Harania’s inspiration, Yohan Auguste , Erik Hauge, Joseph Heffer, Jui Yi Kang, Sultan AlShehhi and Amer Alhammad teamed up for their student design project to create a sustainable water recycling system, known as SWR.

The system runs household wastewater through a series of three filters and is able to recycle 46% of the home’s water into greywater which is non-potable water that can be used to replenish toilet tanks and provide water for irrigation.

The team designed SWR with the user in mind. The greywater recycling station can be built from recycled aluminum and common PVC fittings. The team designed a system that can be easily replicated with limited technical skills and built with supplies that Kenyans have access to.

The team’s goal was to reduce the water’s turbidity (cloudiness) to the same standards as California requires. This was accomplished by their three filter system.

The water first enters the sedimentation tank where the larger particulates settle at the bottom while oil and scum rises to the top. The water then flows into the particulate tank, where small particulate matter is filtered out and goes into a reservoir. Once the reservoir is full, the pump will push the water through the last filtering stage – the bio-organic filter.

The bio-organic filter not only reduces turbidity, but suspended particulate as well as pathogens.  This filter includes a ceramic water filter candle coupled with activated carbon. Activated carbon is the same material used to filter fish tank water and ceramic candle filter have micro-scale pores that traps bacteria and prevents the growth of mold and algae in the filter.

Once the water has gone through all three filters, it is stored and later used for other non-potable household water uses.

The team’s main objective with the system was to create usable greywater, they also went a bit farther to test the system’s ability to remove bacteria.  To measure how much bacteria could be removed with their system, the team employed a glow in the dark bacteria marker known as glow germ.

Using a black light, the team was able to get a visual understanding of how much bacteria was being removed as the water went through each filtering system.

Their hard work paid off, the team took home the Northrop Grumman award for engineering at the 2018 Northrop Grumman Engineering & Science Design Showcase.