Engineering students to showcase designs

Destroyer Bot 3000 -- created by UNL engineering students Jess Hipke, Justin Hood, Steven Pasika and Eric Thomas -- will be on display in the Senior Design Showcase April 22 at Memorial Stadium.

The premier undergraduate engineering student design competition in Nebraska will be from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. April 22 in Memorial Stadium’s East Stadium Club Level, overlooking Nebraska’s iconic football field.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Senior Design Showcase is free to the university community and the public. At the showcase, guests can browse new, innovative projects from graduating Nebraska engineering students; vote on their favorite project in the People’s Choice Award; and tour Nebraska engineering buildings, Memorial Stadium and the Nebraska Athletic Performance Lab.

Previously part of the College of Engineering’s annual Engineers Week, this year held in February, the showcase puts senior capstone course projects in the spotlight.

The Senior Design Showcase will include booths where more than 50 student teams will discuss their projects, which are intended to replicate real-world professional environments. In some cases, students have collaborated with industry clients to develop products and devices that will have immediate impacts.

Some of those include:

A group of mechanical and materials engineering students teamed up with capstone students in the College of Business Administration to help Kinawataka Women Initiatives in Uganda. The engineering team designed and built two machines to help women at KWI more efficiently produce the products they sell, while the business students developed a sustainable business model.
Four electrical and computer engineering students are working with Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo to develop an oxygen sensor and alert system to monitor the water in the zoo’s stingray tanks. In 2015, the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago lost all 54 of its stingrays after a miniscule change in their tanks’ oxygen levels.

Other teams are working, some in collaboration with other UNL colleges and departments, to deliver solutions and products to clients that include Union Pacific, Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, Nelnet Business Solutions, the University of Nebraska College of Law and two of Lincoln’s most-successful Silicon Prairie startups: Hudl and Bulu Box.

Among the other projects at the Senior Design Showcase are a spherical robot that looks similar to BB-8 from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”; an updated school desk that is ergonomically designed with modern students in mind; greener production methods for fuels; construction methods to improve the building of airliners; pool alarms to prevent toddlers from drowning; and medical devices that save lives and improve early childhood development.

The Senior Design Showcase will also offer three tours in which guests can:

Take an engineering-based look at Memorial Stadium;
Join Olympic bobsled gold medalist and former Husker football player Curt Tomasevicz in a tour of the Nebraska Athletic Performance Laboratory, where he is conducting research toward a doctoral degree in biological systems engineering;
Visit labs and facilities in the engineering buildings on City Campus.

To register to attend the Senior Design Showcase or to see updated descriptions of the student projects, click here.

For more information on the showcase or to schedule interviews with student teams or faculty, contact Karl Vogel, communications specialist with the College of Engineering, at 402-472-0451 or kvogel2@unl.edu.