Awards Announcements follow at 6:30pm in McMurtry Auditorium

1. Rice EWB Water Project in El Pital, Chalatenango, El Salvador
   Rice Engineers without Borders (EWB) El Salvador
   (Bioengineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Political Science)
   

   We are designing and implementing a water storage, distribution, and purification system for a Salvadoran village of 300. This is an inter-disciplinary project with ~15 team members from all classes.

2. Texas Children's Hospital Medical Office Building
   APEX
   (Civil Engineering)
   

   Design of medical office building and adjacent site. Both civil and structural aspects are addressed.

3. Disaster Relief: Seawater Desalination After Crude Oil Recovery
   Chbe 404 Group 1
   (Chemical Engineering)
   

   This project features a highly mobile fuel processing system to produce energy powering the desalination of sea water. The target fuel is crude oil spilled as a result of natural disasters, and the product is potable water supplied for the immediate relief of disaster victims.

4. Shuttle Bus Mapping System
   Kriti Charan, Tanwee Misra, Alex Mrozack, Jason Holden
   (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
   

   RFID based tracking system to let people know where the buses are and approximately when they will arrive to each bus stop.

5. CHBE Senior Design Project Team 2
   Team JJ
   (Chemical Engineering)
   

   The conversion of the hurricane debris into life sustaining resources for the refugees.

6. Optimized Neonatal Incubators for the Developing World
   Team HTB
   (Bioengineering, Political Science)
   

   The goals of our project are threefold: (1) Determine the most promising solution for developing world neonatal infant incubation, (2) Optimize the heating/efficiency of our solution by modulating our solution's physical parameters and (3) Disseminate the plans to build our optimized solution to those in the developing world.

7. An Inflight neurovestibular Countermeasure for Gravitational Readaptation
   Team Penguin
   (Bioengineering)
   

   This project seeks to address the negative neurovestibular symptoms (including vertigo, dizziness, unstable gait, and collapse) that astronauts experience upon returning to a gravitational environment after extended stays in space. Such detrimental effects are dangerous and could be potentially catastrophic on missions to foreign planets such as Mars.

8. Hurricane Response Unit
   CHBE Heat and Power
   (Chemical Engineering)
   

   Use of biomass to produce power in a quick response during natural disasters such as hurricanes.

9. Parking Garage and Site
   Sustainable Solutions
   (Civil Engineering)
   

   Our poster will represent the structural design and layout of a parking garage that serves Methodist Hospital in Katy, TX. It will also present a drainage plan and layout for the site.

10. VTOL MAV
    TEAM MAV
    (Mechanical Engineering)
    

    Vertical take off and landing quad copter for use in surveillance. Has GPS and camera.

11. Coastal Natural Disaster Relief: Synthetic Diesel from Cellulosic Biomass
    Mothership Industries
    (Chemical Engineering, Computational and Applied Mathematics)
    

    Following a natural disaster (hurricane, tropical storm, or tsunami), coastal populations struggle to remove debris and rebuild their lives.  Mothership Industries has designed a sea-based mobile unit that will mitigate these issues by producing clean water, electricity, and fuel for vehicles.  The throughput of the process is capable of clearing disaster waste in a matter of weeks.

12. Mobile Disaster Response Unit
    CHBE Team 4
    (Chemical Engineering)
    

    Our objective is to design a process that fits on the back of a single semi truck and provides immediate relief to citizens affected by a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake. The design we selected integrates liquid fuel production with water purification and debris removal to provide a multifaceted disaster response.

13. Owlade: Point of Care Electrolyte Testing System
    Team Owlade
    (Bioengineering)
    

    We have developed a point of care electrolyte testing device to be used in developing world clinics.  The device uses miniature ion-selective electrodes to detect the concentration of physiologically crucial electrolytes.

14. Providing Surgical Eye Care in the Developing World
    Team Athena
    (Bioengineering)
    

    We propose two methods of providing diagnostic and surgical eye care in remote areas of the developing world.  One design, a diagnostic backpack, will allow ophthalmologists to screen patients prior to establishing a base in the country and performing cataract surgery.  The other design, a mobile cataract surgery system, enables ophthalmologists to transport cataract surgical equipment to their intended location.

15. High Five Kettle: A Breast Milk Flash-Heating Device
    Team Honeysuckle
    (Bioengineering, Cognitive Science)
    

    To create a device that  flash-heats breast milk, effectively inactivating cell-free HIV while maintaining the integrity of essential proteins for use in developing countries.

16. Cost Effective Diagnostic Toolkit for Africa
    Team Africare - Ramy-Claude James, Kanes Sutuntivorakoon, Yiming Wang
    (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
    

    We are designing an affordable medical device for use in medical facilities in developing African  nationa that will measure a patient’s EKG and respiration rate and display the information on a smartphone/PDA.

17. Transesophageal Echocardiogram Trainer
    Choking Hazard
    (Bioengineering)
    

    A Transesophageal Echocardiogram (TEE) is a procedure commonly performed by cardiologists. There are currently difficulties and inefficiencies in training new cardiologists because of the lack of feedback. Our device provides a quantitative measure of the force used during TEE probe passage, and sounds an alarm when forces nearing perforation are applied.  It can be used both for research into the forces generally used and as a training tool.

18. Portable Sterilization & Illumination
    Team :D
    (Bioengineering)
    

    The PSI system is dental equipment designed and adapted to be appropriate for a rural setting, especially in the developing world.  A high intensity dental lamp with tripod stand and extraction instruments and supplies are organized in a custom backpack for maximum portability.

19. Versatile Field Microscope for the Developing World
    Andy Miller
    (Bioengineering)
    

    The Beyond Traditional Borders program at Rice has been developing a Lab in a Backpack for clinical field work in developing countries; however, the compound light microscope that is currently deployed takes up a lot of space, is fragile, and requires an expensive custom foam insert. For these reasons, a low cost, small, durable, and versatile field microscope has been developed.

20. Less Costly Glucose Monitor for the Developing World
    The Alpha Team
    (Bioengineering)
    

    We aim to increase access to glucose monitoring in the developing world by rendering test strips reusable, thereby decreasing the per-use cost by 95%.

21. Texas Methodist Hospital Parking Garage
    Insight Onsite
    (Civil Engineering)
    

    Structural design for a parking garage and site design for a hospital campus in west Houston.

22. Mobile Gasification Units for Hurricane Debris Reclamation and Immediate Disaster Relief
    Team Fargo
    (Chemical Engineering)
    

    Reclamation of hurricane debris to provide emergency services to disaster areas utilizing chemical processes.

23. Bone Remodeling Monitor
    Team Taurus
    (Bioengineering)
    

    Our device combines a portable spectrophotometer with a gold-nanoshell based immunoassay to detect the concentration of D-pyr in urine. This concentration serves as a quantitative measurement of systemic bone loss in the human body. The intended use of our device is to measure the bone loss of astronauts in real-time. This will help NASA scientists to both investigate the kinetics of bone loss in microgravity and maximize the efficacy of bone loss treatments.

24. Rotor Design to Land NASA's Reentry Capsule
    Rotor Capsule Team
    (Mechanical Engineering)
    

    The purpose of this project is to determine the feasibility of using a motor-less rotor-based design to precisely land NASA’s Orion Reentry Capsule. The focus is on deployment and autorotation of the blades.

25. AIAA VTOL Competition
    VTOL Competition Mechs
    (Mechanical Engineering)
    

    Design a university-level student competition for the AIAA. This competition will have participants produce autonomous flight VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircrafts that will compete by navigating challenging courses. The competition rewards quality aircraft design and navigation systems.

26. uRound? The future of mobile social networking
    Team uRound - Britt Antley, Rohan Balsaver, Mohamed Jalaly
    (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
    

    uRound? is an application built specifically for your mobile phone that allows you to instantly know which of your friends are around you.

27. Solar Cell Tester
    Team Sol
    (Mechanical Engineering)
    

    Build a lab scale solar cell tester than will characterize the efficiency of solar cells.

28. PRIME: Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator
    Team Heliotrope
    (Bioengineering)
    

    We aim to develop a novel device that can accurately and reliably quantify intrinsic hand strength, with a focus on pediatric patients with abnormal hand morphologies.  Our device utilizes wooden pegs and a PVC pegboard to isolate finger movements.  In addition, a custom force transducer with high sensitivity measures peak force and outputs to a custom NI DAQ.  The final user interface is displayed on a HP iPAQ PDA through a LabVIEW VI.

29. Texas Children's Hospital Medical Office Building
    White Oak Design
    (Civil Engineering)
    

    Design of a medical office building for Texas Children's Hospital in West Houston.

30. Central Water Project for Pueblo Nuevo, Nicara
    Rice University Engineers Without Borders (EWB), Nicaragua 2 Team
    (Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry, Biochemistry)
    

    Pueblo Nuevo is a community of 60 families spread over 5km of land up in the mountains of southern Nicaragua.  Currently, the community lacks electricity and a centralized water source.
     
    The regional San Juan del Sur government (Alcaldía) has developed a plan to centralize all the families in the community.  Each family has been given land in the community center on which to build a house.  By doing so, the community will have better access to resources such as electricity and a centralized water source.
     
    As part of a collaboration with the Alcaldía, our team plans to expand on a project to build a new well in the central part of town.  Water from this well must be pumped up 80 meters to the top of the nearest hill, where it can be stored in a tank and thus be delivered to the community via gravity.  The system will include an electric pump powered by grid electricity and generator backup.

31. Wind Turbine Blade Design
    Tailspin
    (Mechanical Engineering)
    

    Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and physical modeling of various wind turbine blades in order to compare aerodynamic effectiveness.

32. Oxygen Flow and Concentration meter for the Developing World
    Planeteers
    (Bioengineering)
    

    A device that can measure oxygen concentration as well as the rate of oxygen flow.

33. Park Row Drive Extension
    KGR Consultants
    (Civil Engineering)
    

    Design of the extension of an existing road including associated bridge, hydrological system, and underground utilities.

34. Disposable Logging Sensor II
    DLSII
    (Mechanical Engineering, Electrical - United Arab Emirates)
    

    A Wireless tool designed to be inserted into the an oil well to collect a variety of data.

35. Rugged Microscope
    Magnum
    (Bioengineering)
    

36. Pipe Inspection Robot
    Pipe Inspection Robot I
    (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering)
    

    Implementation and Design of a Robot to traverse the interior of a pipe ranging in diameter from 3 inches to 9 inches.

37. Tactile Control for Respiratory Motion Management During Radiotherapy
    Good Vibrations
    (Mechanical Engineering)
    

    Our project is focused on developing a successful respiratory motion conditioning system that will be comprised of tactile cues to assist in producing a consistent breathing pattern in patients undergoing radiotherapy.

38. OB/GYN Lab-in-a-Backpack
    Team Lotus
    (Bioengineering, English)
    

    A backpack and trunk set containing all the necessary supplies to perform well-woman exams, cervical cancer screenings, STI tests, and prenatal care in resource-limited settings in Central and South America.

39. Gigamesh
    The Gigamesh Team - Justin Nordin, Oleg Pesok, Brent Stephens
    (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
    

    Gigamesh is a technique for extending the expected lifespan of NAND flash based devices. It uses a special encoding scheme coupled with traditional wear-leveling algorithms to extend the lifespan of the flash memory. The Gigamesh Team is building a NAND flash USB drive to demonstrate these techniques.

40. Smart Solar Charger
    Team Solar - Akshay Dayal, Timothy Eastaway, Angela Qian, John Steinbauer
    (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
    

    Our project is a dynamic solar power charger. Our device will allow for efficient battery charging and steady power output, while being user-configurable and flexible with regard to battery types and solar panel power.

41. Design and Testing of Microelectric Mechanical Systems
    Team MEMS
    (Mechanical Engineering)
    

    We designed, laid out, ran preliminary tests and then actually tested three different MEMS devices.

42. Assistive Robotics Design for Upper-Limb Rehabilitation
    RoboRehab
    (Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering)
    

    Our team is developing an assistive device that interfaces wirelessly with an upper-limb rehabilitation exoskeleton to motivate victims of spinal cord injuries and stroke to continue their therapy at home.