Engineering Design Day 2022 - Optics Feature

The biggest event of an undergraduate engineering student's life was back in-person this week! Engineering Design Day took place at the University of Arizona Student Union Ballroom on May 3rd. Fifteen teams included one or more Wyant College of Optical Sciences B.S. students this year and five of those teams took home one or more prizes! Find a photo album from the day here. See the digital booklet of projects here.

Ben Cromey, Wyant College alumnus (B.S. 2015,  M.S. 2018, Ph.D. 2020) who now works for Ball Aerospace as an optical engineer, mentored team 22009 this year and shared, "I love continuing to participate in the senior design program, as this enables me to stay involved with the University and with this great course I helped teach for five years. The program is also a great opportunity for us to scout out promising students to recruit to Ball. I’m proud of my team for the hard work they did on my project, Low Cost Drone Tracker! I had fun working with them over the course of the past year, and appreciated their sense of humor working with me."

Caption: Jason Gaines (senior manager at Ball), Brad Zimmerman (ECE), Carlos Cavillo (ME), Gregory Taylor (former Ball intern, OSE), Mac Kelly (ME), Sebastian Valencia (2022 incoming Ball intern, OSE), Ben Cromey (optical engineer at Ball), and Michelle Helton (operations manager at Ball) | (Credit: Ben Cromey)

According to the College of Engineering, "Engineering students competed for more than $46,000 in prizes at the first in-person Engineering Design Day since 2019, with projects ranging from a battery-powered flashbang alternative to mealworm protein bars."

In a press release about Design Day the College of Engineering spoke on one optical sciences focused team,

One team – Team 22030 – took home the $7,500 Craig M. Berge Dean's Award for Most Outstanding Project, for their Blinding Resonant Incapacitating Throwable Emitter, or BRITE. Traditional flashbang grenades emit a bright light and loud sound to disorient an assailant, but can also be potentially harmful to the person using it. The team developed a battery-powered, reusable alternative designed to be safe for the user.

The team members created three full prototypes of the device and several dozen prototypes of individual parts. One of the keys to their success, they believe, is that they started early and reiterated often.

"Most of the products sitting on this table did not work," said optical sciences and engineering major Alex St Peter, gesturing to an array of 3D-printed parts. "Did we fail? Totally. But we failed really early, so we were able to correct that."

The students were drawn to the project for its many components, and for its application in fields like defense and law enforcement.

"You could give this to law enforcement and it could be usable. It's something that sparked my eye, and I can see it in the real world," said team lead Jeston Rusnak, a mechanical engineering major. "This is my first time leading a team on a large scale, especially in an engineering capacity. Being surrounded by a bunch of smart people all the time, I have to be on top of my game."

Overall, a very successful return to in-person Design Day welcomed excitement and enthusiasm for innovation along with perserverance through challenges—qualities that define the field of engineering. Congratulations to all the senior design students on a job well-done and for the exciting futures that lay ahead of you. Read the official press release.

Craig M. Berge Design Day 2022 Teams with Optical Sciences Majors

Team 22007

Title: Noncontact Cell Concentration Detector
Optics Students: Colin Kendall Hegarty, Nikhil Nagarajan
College Mentor: Mark Brazier
Sponsor: Roche
Project Advisor: Michael Selep

Team 22009

Title: Low-Cost Drone Tracker
Optics Students: Gregory J Taylor, Sebastian Valencia
College Mentor: Mike Nofziger
Sponsor: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
Project Advisor: Benjamin Cromey

Team 22010

Title: Microscope Slide Cleaning System
Optics Student: Dayton F Brown
College Mentor: Mark Brazier
Sponsor: Roche
Project Advisor: Matt Mette
Award: Raytheon Award for Best Overall Design - $5,000

Team 22015

Title: Low Size, Weight, and Power Forward Motion Blur Correction for Airborne Imaging
Optics Student: Sarina M Grijalva
College Mentors: Heather Hilzendeger, Scott Wright
Sponsor: Arete
Project Advisor: Chris Reyerson

Team 22026

Title: A Real-Time Vegetation Stress Detection System on a Drone
Optics Students: Matthew Phillip Wolfgang Hevert
College Mentor: Mike Nofziger
Sponsor: Biosystems Engineering
Project Advisor: Kamel Didan
Awards: (1) W.L. Frank Broyles Award for Best Unmanned Aircraft Systems Design (Second Prize) – $250
(2) The Mensch Foundation Award for Best Use of Embedded Intelligence – $1,000
(3) TRAX International Award for Best Implementation of Agile Methodology – $1,000

Team 22028

Title: Connecting Virtual to Reality: Joining VR with Complex Opti-Robotics
Optics Students: Tyler Collins, Jace Malm
College Mentor: Mike Nofziger
Sponsor: Airy Optics
Project Advisor: Carter Conway
Awards: (1) ACSS, an L3 Harris and Thales Joint Venture Award for Most Robust Systems Engineering - $2,500
(2) Technical Documentation Consultants of Arizona Award for Best Design Documentation – $1,000
(3) Simpson Family Award for Best Simulation and Modeling – $500

Team 22030

Title: BRITE: Blinding Resonant Incapacitating Throwable Emitter
Optics Student: Alex St Peter
College Mentor: Mike Nofziger
Sponsor: Elbit Systems
Project Advisor: Matthias Whitney
Awards: (1) Craig M. Berge Dean’s Award for Most Outstanding Project – $7,500
(2) AZ Technica Award for Manufacturing Readiness – $500

Team 22036

Title: Robotic Platform for Autonomous Vehicle Safety Assessment
Optics Student: Dani Trontz
College Mentor: Elmer Grubbs
Sponsor: Tucson Embedded Systems
Project Advisor: Jonathan Schwab

Team 22041

Title: Comprehensive Modeling of Beam Propagation in Multimode Fiber and Experimental Validation
Optics Students: Samar Choura, Lam Nguyen
College Mentor: Pat Caldwell
Sponsor: ASML
Project Advisor: Tao Chen

Team 22044

Title: Hyperspectral Camera
Optics Students: Avalon McLeod, Kevin Meyer
College Mentor: Huy Le
Sponsor: Raytheon Technologies
Project Sponsor: Casey Streuber
Award: II-VI Aerospace & Defense Award for Best Optical Systems Design - $1,500

Team 22053

Title: Adaptive Robot Gripper
Optics Student: Max Critchfield
College Mentor: Don McDonald
Sponsor: Unilever
Project Sponsor: Kati Gastrow

Team 22059

Title: Sensible Solutions
Optics Student: Juan Inostroza
College Mentor: Mike Nofziger
Sponsor: Bayer CropScience
Project Advisor: Jason Licamele

Team 22063

Title: Compact Near-Infrared Imaging Module for Photolithography Source Metrology
Optics Students: Gabriel James Knepper, Adrielle Troels Thorenfeldt
College Mentor: Don McDonald
Sponsor: ASML
Project Advisor: Erik Huerta

Team 22065

Title: Digital to Physical Point Mapping
Optics Student: Maddie Nowaczyk
College Mentor: Huy Le
Sponsor: Raytheon Technologies
Project Advisor: Michael Futch

Team 22068

Title: Close-Range High-Speed Video Tracking
Optics Students: Madeline Bergay, Luke Somerville
College Mentor: Mike Nofziger
Sponsor: Raytheon Technologies
Project Advisor: Jim Bakarich