The tenth annual College of Engineering Design Day, held in the Bear Down Gymnasium on May 1, saw around 300 seniors present almost 60 projects in a competition for 22 prizes totaling nearly $14,000.

"This was one of the most successful Senior Capstone Design cycles to date in terms of the number and variety of industry sponsors, the challenges their projects presented, and the quality of the designs and prototypes the students in the course produced," said Ara Arabyan, coordinator of the Senior Capstone Design Program and an associate professor in aerospace and mechanical engineering.

When the 71 industry judges finished their deliberations, the top prize, for best overall design, went to the Computational Optics design project, sponsored by Raytheon Missile Systems. The team of systems, industrial, electrical and optical engineering students designed an experimental test bed to demonstrate how computational optics could outperform inflexible opto-mechanical systems found in current aerospace sensor platforms.

The second place winner, sponsored by Tucson Embedded Systems, was SAMURAI, which derives from semi-autonomous mapping and urban rescue area inspection. The team built on designs from previous years to develop an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle loaded with sensors, for use in hazardous environments, that can map the interior of a building and transmit data back to the user through a command and control center, where a visualization of the building is created.

Although many projects at Design Day are experimental prototypes, some are just a few steps away from real-world deployment. "Some of the products produced by the students, such as the digital upgrade of a fuel flow indicator for Airtronics, and the portable survey tool for Raytheon Missile Systems, are ready to be used by their sponsors," Arabyan said.

Other projects, such as Computational Optics for Raytheon and Viewing Earth's Curvature with a Weather Balloon for Lockheed Martin, produced results that exceeded the expectations of their sponsors, Arabyan added.

"As in past years, this cycle demonstrated that our engineering graduates are ready for the marketplace in terms of their training, creativity, and boundless energy," Arabyan said. "It was also proof of the active participation of the industrial partners of the College of Engineering in the education and training of engineering students."

Slide Show from Design Day 2012

Design Day 2011: UA Engineering Special Video Production

Engineering Design Day 2012 Prize Winners

Best Overall Design, First Place • $1000
Computational optics
Design team: Kate Green, Lena Wolfe, Nan Ding, Josh Brent, Matthew Barnum, Saúl Corrales
Project sponsor: Raytheon Missile Systems
Prize sponsor: BAE Systems 

Best Overall Design, Second Place • $750
SAMURAI: semi-autonomous mapping and urban rescue area inspection
Design team: Roger Anderson, Delbert Gallego, Sean Culbertson, Craig Cumblidge, Jarl Haggerty
Project sponsor: Tucson Embedded Systems
Prize sponsor: BAE Systems 

Best Analog Design, First Place • $1500
Electronic pH pool water tester
Design team: Ahmed Alani, Alex Mattioli, Ryan Caskey, Emanuel Soimaru, Trevor Husseini
Project sponsor: Texas Instruments
Prize sponsor: Texas Instruments 

Best Analog Design, Second Place • $500
Jockey "smart helmet" for horse racing
Design team: Stephen Nelson, W. A. Garret Weaver, Trevor West, Patrick Lull, Cedric Bosch, Louie Benitez
Project sponsor: Equisight LLC
Prize sponsor: Texas Instruments 

Innovation in Engineering • $1000
Intelligent webcrawler for identifying construction leads
Design team: Jesse Gunsch, Gregory Ksionda, Gregory Reid, Alberto Molina
Project sponsor: Sundt Construction Inc.
Prize sponsor: Ventana Medical Systems Inc. 

Best Computer Modeling/Analysis • $1000
High power and efficiency generator shaft conduction cooling
Design team: Daniel Hand, Kevin Witwer, Dana Sandoval, Gavin Stockus, Levi Tubb
Project sponsor: Honeywell Aerospace
Prize sponsor: Hydronalix 

Best Use of Off-the-Shelf Components • $750
Autopilot integration on micro air vehicles
Design team: Jared Hainsworth, Kyle Merry, Daniel Schucker, Chris Wozny
Project sponsor: Jonathan Sprinkle and Sergey Shkarayev
Prize sponsor: Edmund Optics 

Best Use of Prototyping • $750
Digital upgrade of a fuel flow indicator
Design team: Jared Evans, Alex Hale, Kira Travis, Kyle Sheets
Project sponsor: Airtronics Inc.
Prize sponsor: PADT 

Best Engineering Analysis • $750
ASME: human-powered vehicle
Design team: Giancarlo Guevara, Michael Lesnewski, Justin Monson, Charles King, Abdulla Al-Hail
Project sponsor: UA student chapter of ASME
Prize sponsor: Raytheon 

Best Presentation • $750
Remote listening device
Design team: Nick Neuenfeldt, Matt Hamel, Nick Melena, Adam Slagel, Collin Smith, Charles Mackin
Project sponsor: Lockheed Martin Corp.
Prize sponsor: Rincon Research Corp. 

Best Design Documentation • $750
Enhanced digital passenger control unit
Design team: Miguel Ruiz, Daigaro Cota, Corey Coolidge, Ronald Russell, Aaron Gibson, Jose Maytorena
Project sponsor: B/E Aerospace
Prize sponsor: Technical Documentation Consultants of Arizona 

Voltaire Design Award • $750
Robust shaft measurement technique
Design team: Jun Chai, Thomas Ireson, Adam Mullenbach, Eric Prewitt, Kai Yu
Project sponsor: Caterpillar Inc. Proving Grounds, Green Valley, Ariz.
Prize sponsor: Sargent Aerospace & Defense 

Best Creative Solution • $750
Development of very quick polymerase chain reaction (PCR) device
Design team: Ramon Muñoz, Franklin Garcia, Franklin Ventura
Project sponsor: UA Biosensors Lab, Jeong-Yeol Yoon's Research Group
Prize sponsor: W.L. Gore & Associates

Best Physical Implementation of an Analytically Driven Design • $500
AIAA: Fast Aerial Reconnaissance – Launch Vehicle (FAR-LV)
Design team: John Kidd, Kyle Pack, Scott Kendrick, William Roulo, Monem Al-Dhaif
Project sponsor: UA AIAA
Prize sponsor: Latitude Engineering

Best Electronic Design • $500
SAMURAI: semi-autonomous mapping and urban rescue area inspection
Design team: Roger Anderson, Delbert Gallego, Sean Culbertson, Craig Cumblidge, Jarl Haggerty
Project sponsor: Tucson Embedded Systems
Prize sponsor: Ridgetop Group

Best Team Leadership 1 • $250
Simulated aneurysm deployment model
Design team: German Castillo (winner), Ahmad Al Matouq, Aaron Gibson, Erin Lauterbach, Isaac Tineo, Heeje Yang
Project sponsor: W.L. Gore & Associates
Prize sponsor: Honeywell

Best Team Leadership 2 • $250
AIAA: Fast Aerial Reconnaissance (FAR) UAV
Design team: Ryan Crompton (winner), Kevin Schwab, Lijun Shan, Chris Wellons, Alex Yang
Project sponsor: UA AIAA
Prize sponsor: Honeywell

Best Circuit Design • $250
Fully-automated soil testing and control systems
Design team: Eric Campbell, Kyle Chong, Eric Herman, Adjete Wilson
Project sponsor: Texas Instruments
Prize sponsor: Prototron Circuits

Excellence in Aerospace Design • $250
Aircraft thrust recovery valve
Design team: Ahmed Al Salman, Christopher Grusenmeyer, Patrick Joyce, Jeffrey Pyne, Bradley Warner, Jing Yang
Project sponsor: Honeywell Aerospace
Prize sponsor: Honeywell

Excellence in Aerospace Electronic Design • $250
Ruggedized helicopter rotor health instrumentation
Design team: Alan Olsen, Daniel Carman, Danielle Theodore, Vladimir Medina
Project sponsor: Airtronics Inc.
Prize sponsor: Honeywell

Fish Out of Water, First Place • $250
Ruggedized helicopter rotor health instrumentation
Design team: Daniel Carman (winner), Alan Olsen, Danielle Theodore, Vladimir Medina
Project sponsor: Airtronics Inc.
Prize sponsor: Kristy Pearson

Fish Out of Water, Second Place • $150
ASME: human-powered vehicle
Design team: Giancarlo Guevara (winner), Michael Lesnewski, Justin Monson, Charles King, Abdulla Al-Hail
Project sponsor: UA student chapter of ASME
Prize sponsor: Kristy Pearson