Chanting “It works” and holding up a tiny white box, an elated University of Arizona engineering student, Kevin Klug, and one of his teammates, Sean Rice, race toward electrical and computer engineering professors Michael Marcellin and Kathleen Melde.

One innovative Engineering Design Day project is a GPS location tracker and radio transmitter to be used among a population of golden lion tamarins, which are spectacular but endangered flame-colored miniature monkeys found in a dwindling portion of Brazil's coastal rain forest.

The student is holding a prototype GPS tracker for the endangered golden lion tamarin monkey. The tracker, which builds on a 2012 project, could be headed for the Amazon rainforest; the students are headed for a rite of passage -- Design Day -- along with about 300 other College of Engineering seniors.

"This is the best day of the academic year for the College of Engineering," said Dean Jeff Goldberg. “This is what engineering at the UA is all about.”

Each year as part of the Interdisciplinary Engineering Design Program, teams from various engineering disciplines display their club-, faculty-, and industry-sponsored projects at Design Day, a tradition that often ends in jobs for graduates and solutions for partnering companies, and sometimes even products in the hands of consumers.

The 11th annual College of Engineering Design Day will feature about 60 projects, and there is sure to be something for everyone in the wide array of creations on display, for example:

•    An ethanol conversion kit for gas-powered mowers
•    A vibrating orthotic shoe insert for foot pain
•    A disposable blood glucose meter for people with diabetes
•    A robotic “seeing” fish for aquarium visitors
•    A self-testing unit for glaucoma patients
•    Interactive laser tag equipment
•    A congestive heart failure patient monitor
•    A sorghum sugar extractor for ethanol production
•    A surveillance drone

Design Day 2013 will be Tuesday, April 30, 2013 from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. at the Tucson Marriott University Park.  An awards ceremony, with $12,000 in prizes, will follow at 4 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

"Stop, look and talk with student teams about their projects," said Goldberg. 'They’d like nothing better than to show you what their projects are all about."

Underlying Design Day is the College’s commitment to aligning itself with industry needs. Not only are most of the yearlong, client-driven senior projects sponsored by industry partners, who are on the lookout for potential employees, but also industry experts at Design Day judge the students’ work in a number of categories, and students are mentored by engineering professionals.

"The projects often solve problems for the sponsors and may result in patents," said Ara Arabyan, coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Engineering Design Program and UA professor of mechanical engineering. "Most importantly, though, sponsoring companies get an opportunity to see graduating seniors in action and get a leg up in identifying and hiring promising graduates."

Among the project sponsors are Airtronics Inc., B/E Aerospace, Boeing, Bosque Engineering, Caterpillar, General Electric, Honeywell, NASA, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Texas Instruments, Tucson Embedded Systems, Ventana Medical Systems, and W.L. Gore and Associates.