Capstone Design Expo Winners
At the largest expo yet, with 137 teams showcasing very promising innovation and inventions during the Spring 2013 Capstone Design Expo in Georgia Tech's McCamish Pavilion, winners undoubtedly earned their awards!
The best overall project, as determined by judges' scores, went to Nuttin' But Trouble for the redesign of industrial pecan cracking machine. Nuttin’ But Trouble, made up of ME students Michael Jacobs, Jonathan Kuo, Jignesh Patel, Sam Eden, Eric Shults, and Matt O’Donnell, was sponsored by the Harrell Nut Company for their project. Taking the top prize and bragging rights, these students also took home $2,000.
The Capstone Design Expo is the culmination of many engineering majors' undergraduate careers. Students from multiple disciplines, including mechanical engineering (ME), biomedical engineering (BME), aerospace engineering (AE), electrical and computer engineering (ECE), and industrial design (ID), work in either mono- or interdisciplinary teams to develop various prototypes for real world applications. Both industry and campus created projects were designed and developed by approximately 650 graduating seniors, nearly double the participants in last semester’s Expo.
An exciting part of the night was the live texting for the People’s Choice awards, whose results were updated in real time on the McCamish Pavilion jumbotron. Two teams were winners in the minds of the attendees, Spine Space, a BME team who developed a vertebral body implant, and Breaking Ground, an interdisciplinary team of both ME and ID students who developed reliable, affordable, and effective tools suitable for small scale, intensive farming with a focus on the use by refugee farmers.
School Chairs lined up to present discipline awards for top projects in ME, BME, AE, ECE, and ID. Team Fooore was awarded Top ME Project and was one of the many teams sponsored by John Deere this semester. The company provided the teams with the production version of their automated lawn mowers and challenged the students to come up with a novel application for the mower while adding enhanced intelligence to the entire system. Team Fooore did just that by upgrading the Tango E5 Lawn Mower to include an intelligent navigation strategy and golf ball collection for use at driving ranges.
Spring 2013 Capstone Design Expo Winners:
Best Overall – Nuttin’ But Trouble
Michael Jacobs
Jonathan Kuo
Jignesh Patel
Sam Eden
Eric Shults
Matt O’Donnell
People's Choice (mono-disciplinary/BME) – Spine Space
Chelsea Fechter
Olivia Steele
Eric Ambrose
Brett Rogers
Juliet Jacobson
People’s Choice (interdisciplinary/ID-ME) - Breaking Ground
Chris Chapman
Christina Lee
Lucy Mitchell
Sam Redding
Larissa Sanford
Lauren Young
Discipline Awards
Top Mechanical Engineering Project – Team Fooore
Tara Trostel
Wale Odukomaiya
Seth Austin
David Perkins
Dalton Hampton
Carson Banov
Biomedical Engineering - Visioneers
Yazdin Raji
Justin Yang
Sina Mostaghimi
Kinza Shekhani
Aerospace Engineering – Maximum Capacitance
Michael Hodgson
Parker Vasick
Benjamin Bitoun
Addison Hern
David Diaz
Stephen Fialko
Jeff Brenna
Bobby Barrett
Michael Steinfeld
Electrical and Computer Engineering – Follow-Me-Heli
Matt Baxter
Penyen Chi
Sam Elia
Neil Patel
Chris Stolz
Industrial Design – Helter Shelter
Renee Barron
Rae Luetschwager
Hassan Saeed
Aaron Kranc
Emily Gooding
Yisha Zhou
Thanks to the many Capstone Design Expo sponsors who gave generously, both monetarily and in time, this semester to our senior project design teams. While our students received hands-on experience creating solutions to industry challenges, sponsors were provided with answers to real-world problems.
Big kudos to all the participants in the Capstone Design Expo. Good luck in your future endeavors as Georgia Tech graduates.