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Every fall, the College of Engineering hosts the GSCP Pitch Event to give students the opportunity to explain how their projects not only address one of the 14 Grand Challenges, but meet primary NAE program components: Sustainability, Health, Security, and Joy of Living.
Students pitch their challenge projects to an assembly of judges made up of faculty, alumni and members of the U of I Academy of Engineers to secure funding for their ideas.
Grand Challenge Scholars
The University of Idaho College of Engineering is committed to the Grand Challenge Scholars Program — a combined curricular and extra-curricular program with five components designed to prepare students to address the 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering in the 21st century.
Not all tendons are the same. We have tendons in our knees and feet we use for balance and others that are constantly under force, like our Achilles, which connects the calf muscle to the heel bone and is one of the tendons essential to humans walking.
I am working to determine how a tendon’s specific function affects its development. I have been researching the effects of mechanical loading, or the amount of force placed on a tendon through movement. Using digital images of the tendons of lab rats during early development, I am working to identify visual differences in the ways tendons form based on their use.
Challenge Selected:Engineer Better Medicines
Doctors have long known that people differ in susceptibility to disease and response to medicines. But, with little guidance for understanding and adjusting to individual differences, treatments have been standardized rather than individualized.
Platinum Winners
Lola Bangudu
Pitch: Researching using monkey and human 3D models to compare cerebrospinal fluid flow
Research Focus:Revolutionizing brain-drug delivery
Transporting drugs to the brain through the blood is tedious due to the blood brain barrier that blocks most substances. We are able to bypass this problem and transport drugs through cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
I have spent the last year creating a 3D model of a monkey's cerebrospinal fluid system in order to conduct research without harming live test subjects. I plan on using it for the purposes of testing against a human model’s and comparing the similarities and differences between the two. Significant differences in flow could potentially affect current research work being performed on live monkeys.
Challenge Selected: Reverse Engineering the Brain
For decades, some of engineering’s best minds have focused their thinking skills on how to create thinking machines — computers capable of emulating human intelligence.
Research Focus: Optimize plasma reactor operation to treat for PFAS and determine safety concerns in using reactor for water treatment
Polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are chemicals that are used in a variety of materials, including aircraft manufacturing, automobiles, Teflon and solar panels. These man-made chemicals take an average of three years to break down in the human body.
My research involves using high-voltage plasma reactors to destroy PFAS in water. Water filters exist already for PFAS, but are just a Band-Aid to the problem. Using high voltage is more effective and would reduce consumption and waste produced by current filtration systems.
Challenge Selected: Provide Access to Clean Water
Today, the availability of water for drinking and other uses is a critical problem in many areas of the world.
Isabell
Strawn
Pitch: Funding to attend the 30th annual Idaho Water Quality Workshop in Boise and summer study abroad program in Suzhou, China
Research Focus: Bioremediation of groundwater contaminants using biobeads
Bacteria used in the bioremediation of groundwater contaminants face harsh environments with toxic chemicals and changing pH levels. The goal of my research is to develop a polymer hydrogel biobead that can protect the bacteria from the environment so that they can more efficiently degrade toxic chemicals.
Challenge Selected: Provide Access to Clean Water
Today, the availability of water for drinking and other uses is a critical problem in many areas of the world.
Bishal
Thapa
Pitch: Adding two plasma reactors to boost efficiency and create continuous system
Research Focus: Development of eco-friendly alternative to current nitrogen fertilizer using plasma technology
I am studying the amount of nitrogen oxides (NOx) production using non-thermal plasma. By studying air and water flow rates through a hand-constructed plasma reactor, I have determined that nitrogen oxide concentrations increase with incremental increases in voltage.
My ultimate goal is to design a complete system using the plasma reactor to produce a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. I will continue my research, using the plasma reactor to study effects of different input levels.
I am really focused on agriculture and making food available for everyone all over the world. Fertilizer is an important part of that goal to increase food production efficiency.
Challenge Selected: Manage the Nitrogen Cycle
It doesn’t offer as catchy a label as “global warming,” but human-induced changes in the global nitrogen cycle pose engineering challenges just as critical as coping with the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels for energy.
Gold Winners
Camille Eddy
Pitch: Developing empathy-driven wearable device to connect people with what they care about
Research Focus: Bringing social impact into engineering research
Going through social media, it’s easy to interact with people you may otherwise not know how to interact with in a direct way. My research focuses on redesigning technology in a way that gets people to interact, is ubiquitous in its use and easy to use for all ages.
My product idea could be something like a wearable device someone could wear during a performance or public speech that would buzz or make some indication to the user that someone in the world is thinking about them.
The goal of this idea is to make a space for social conscience in engineering and research, something that is especially important for women in engineering. That is a place where a lot of female engineers tend to exit the workforce, because they don’t see that space.
Research Focus: Developing stronger crops and improving food production
As a mechanical engineer, I’m working to index the mechanical properties of corn stalks to mitigate crop lodging, or the bending of grain-crop stalks that reduce harvest yield. By conducting dimensional analysis, puncture tests and more, I will help compile a research data pool that biologists eventually can use to breed for better and stronger corn varieties.
Challenge Selected: Sustainability
The Earth is a planet of finite resources, and its growing population currently consumes them at a rate that cannot be sustained. Economical sources of clean and renewable energy must be found while ways of reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels are developed.
Devin
Richards
Pitch: Conference attendance to help build business plan for construction company in space
Research Focus: Progress Trash2Gas team research/implementation and industry knowledge of space construction
The focus on space exploration and lunar base settlements makes research toward the logistics bringing humans into space even more important. Using the moon as a launch pad for deep space missions, we’re going to need efficient bases, transportation and the construction power to create it.
In my second year as a NASA L’Space Virtual Academy student, I am learning NASA mission protocols, procedures, and practices to accomplish a team-based design project and mission proposal. I want to use this knowledge as a foundation and start to a potential space company.
Challenge Selected: Engineering Tools of Scientific Discovery
Discovery In the popular mind, scientists and engineers have distinct job descriptions. Scientists explore, experiment, and discover; engineers create, design and build.
Silver Winners
Annika Esau
Pitch: Completing research in Pittsburgh on reducing the workload for project maintainers on GitHub, a software development platform
Research Focus: Reducing the workload for project maintainers on GitHub, a software development platform
I spent the last summer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as part of an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) funded by the National Science Foundation. There, I worked to make it easier for developers on the software development platform GitHub to locate redundant work.
I hope to return to Pittsburgh next spring to complete my research and present it at the International Conference on Software Engineering in May 2020.
Challenge Selected: Reverse Engineering the Brain
For decades, some of engineering’s best minds have focused their thinking skills on how to create thinking machines — computers capable of emulating human intelligence.
Research Focus: Developing stronger crops and improving food production
With more acres dedicated to it than any other crop in the U.S., corn is the most important crop in the world today. For decades, stalk lodging has been a major problem that reduces harvest yields by a minimum 5% each year. Stalk lodging occurs when the top-heavy corn crops break under the force of wind or rain. Using precise measurements of the shape of cornstalks, I am trying to assess whether or not corn stalks are already optimized for these natural forces.
My aim is to help develop a method of quantitatively measuring stalk strength to allow breeders to breed for stalks that are more resistant towards lodging.
Challenge Selected: Sustainability
The Earth is a planet of finite resources, and its growing population currently consumes them at a rate that cannot be sustained. Economical sources of clean and renewable energy must be found while ways of reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels are developed.
Tavara Freeman, Computer Engineering and Grand Challenge Scholar, forges her own path, from breaking stereotypes to learning biomarkers of Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
