Engineers ‘making the world a better place’ show off innovation at Western New England University

SPRINGFIELD — Portable equipment that detects melanoma in the skin, artificial intelligence that interprets American Sign Language, a dryer designed specifically for wet shoes. An electronic eye that detects obstacles behind powered wheelchairs and won't let users crash.

"There is a need for it. I see it every day," said Serena Elias, a Western New England University freshman mechanical engineering major from Norwood, whose sister, Trinity, uses a wheelchair and also has difficulty turning around to look behind her.

With the chair Elias and her teammates built — today just a small model with a doll — blocking the electronic eye cuts the power to the wheels.

Western New England University hosted its annual end-of-school year Emerging Engineers Expo Tuesday in the Caprio Alumni Healthful Living Center.

The event featured more than 100 projects developed by students across all class years including 35 first-year innovation projects and 69 Senior Capstone Design Projects, representing months of collaborative problem-solving and design.

Western New England University's engineering programs are project-based, said Michael J. Rust, professor and director of experiential and entrepreneurial learning in the biomedical engineering program.

"This pulls together what they have learned," he said. "And it gets them ready for the tasks they'll be asked to do in their careers. For some of them, that starts in two weeks when they graduate."

Engineering and pure science often get confused, he said. And while they use a lot of the same skills, engineers tend to focus on specific challenges.

"Engineers make the world a better place," Rust said.

The university invites friends, family and potential employers to the event.

A better place for patients recuperating with leg injuries might be less likely to suffer damage to their Achilles tendons, said senior mechanical engineering student Nicole Sebastino of Pittsfield.

Her project is a small pneumatic bellows that fits under a foot — demonstrated here by a stocking over a foam model. The bellows moves back and forth flexing the patient's foot and keeping the tendon moving to prevent injury.

Today, in most cases, preventing those ailments falls to overworked nurses massaging the lower leg by hand.

"I tested it out on myself," Sebastino said.

Biomedical engineering seniors Kristina Seeger, Angelina Savino and Matthew Brennan developed a multiport IV system that splits the flow of fluids from an IV bag into as many as three equal streams.

The idea, Seeger said, came from doctors frustrated by patients either young or elderly with small, fragile blood vessels that demand small needles and small catheters. Too small often to deliver all the life-sustaining fluids necessary.

"I was surprised by the amount of detail required," Seeger, a senior, said. "See those tiny threads on that coupling? They have to meet an industry standard and perform up to a specific set of requirements."

Noor Awkel, a senior in biomedical engineering from Springfield, was part of a team that designed an arm that can hold a sonogram probe for an anesthesiologist. With the probe in a holder, it gives the anesthesiologist two free hands to find a vein.

"Imagine pacing IVs all day and how hard it would become," Awkel said.

Doctors at Yale, suffering from shaky hands after a day of fatiguing work and tired of setting down the sonography probe only to have to sterilize again, gave the students the scenario and the engineering challenge.

Freshman project SK8 attaches GPS and sound equipment to skateboards so skaters know how fast and how far they are going, said freshman mechanical engineering student Christian Espino.

And the sound system plays a satisfying "completion" or "victory" sound after landing a stunt. The sound mimics what a video game system would do.

"So it's like you're in the game," Espino said.

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