CHEE Sponsors Multiple Award-Winning Projects at Design Day 2022
At Craig M. Berge Design Day 2022, students, faculty and friends of the College of Engineering celebrated coming together in person after two years of virtual events due to the pandemic.
Design Day – named for Craig M. Berge, a College of Engineering alumnus and longtime supporter of the college who passed in 2017 – is an annual opportunity for engineering seniors to present the results of their yearlong projects to the public and hundreds of judges. This year, 97 teams of students, who completed projects requested by industry and university sponsors, competed for $46,250 in prizes.
One team spent Design Day serving up free samples of protein bars with a special ingredient: mealworms. The idea of eating insects is rising in popularity as some experts project the global population will soon outpace human's ability to produce traditional sources of food. Insects require less water, land and food than traditional livestock, and the entirety of an insect can be eaten, compared with 50% or less of an animal like a cow.
"We figured if we put something in a protein bar, it would be more accepted by people, rather than giving them a mealworm steak," said chemical engineering major Collin Patrick Quenelle. "We were able to get 23% of the protein out of the mealworm."
"We only got 4% the first time," added his teammate and fellow chemical engineering major Brett Aiden Cernich, noting the team's progress through the year.
Sustainability was a common theme in this year's Design Day projects. Other teams sought to address global food supply issues with projects related to vertical farming, renewable energy storage and using drones to detect stress levels in crops.
CHEE sponsored two student projects that earned awards this year:
Team 22077's project on Sustainable Lithium Production won the Bly Family Award for Innovation in Energy Production, Supply or Use (Second Prize) worth $1,000. They also won the AZ Technica Award for Sustainable Manufacturing Innovation worth $500. Team 22077 consists of Tyler J Bailey, Ascii DeLeon Magno, Ahmad Kh A A H Mohammad, and Aloysia J Wine.
Team 22091's project on Hydro-Desulfurization Unit won the SciTech Institute Award for Best Engineering Analysis worth $750. Team 22091 consists of Paul Satoshi Haynes, Ian Hitner, Marc Manye Ibanez, and Victor Vargas.