VCU news

By Leila Ugincius

A device that tests saliva instead of blood to determine a heart attack. An economically efficient phosphate removal system. An app that lets employees stand out from the crowd among job seekers.

These are a sampling of the projects that were recently presented by Virginia Commonwealth University students at the School of Engineering’s annual Capstone Design Expo and Dean’s Society events.

A signature event of the School of Engineering, the expo represents the culmination of the graduating class’s education and offers design teams the opportunity to display and demonstrate their prototypes to the Greater Richmond community. The event also serves to increase the awareness of the engineering profession among middle and high school students.

About 700 people, including a cadre of Richmond’s VIPs, turned out for the Dean’s Society event on the eve of the annual expo. While the event usually attracts about 200 to 250 people, the event this year — the School of Engineering’s 20th anniversary — attracted three times as many attendees. 

Former Gov. George Allen called the event a birthday celebration for the school. Allen said he was proud of the progress and evolution of the School of Engineering, “this sapling that we planted 20 years ago.”

“The fruit it’s bearing are these students and their great projects,” he said.

VCU President Emeritus Eugene P. Trani, Ph.D., recalled asking the dean of Stanford about the most important event at its School of Engineering. “And he said, ‘To get computer science from the Arts and Sciences.’ And I said in my mind, ‘Boy, if that’s good enough for Stanford, it’s good enough for VCU.’ And the computer science department became part of the [VCU] School of Engineering, and it’s just amazing what we have now.”

Richmond philanthropist William “Bill” H. Goodwin Jr., retired president and chair of CCA Financial, shared a recollection from even farther back — before VCU had an engineering school. The school’s genesis was when a colleague mentioned to him that Richmond was the largest metropolitan area without one. Goodwin and other members of the Richmond business community then met with Trani, whom Goodwin calls a spark plug.

“There were originally 33 founding trustees and they were the group of men and women that got together and really started the engineering school and also … contributed a lot of money,” Goodwin said.

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The next day’s annual judged Capstone Expo event represented the culmination of every graduating senior’s education.

“As I walked around, I saw an awful lot of potentially commercializable technology,” said Barbara Boyan, Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Engineering, speaking to students. “And don’t let this pass you by. Some of you are genuine entrepreneurs and you have the opportunity to take these technologies and build them into possibly companies and certainly technology that people can use. Don’t forget to do that just because you’re getting ready to graduate.”

The projects are the product of a year-long Capstone Design course, led by Bennett Ward, Ph.D., associate professor and capstone coordinator, which immerses senior engineering students in the hands-on processes of solving practical “real world” problems.

Through their projects, student teams practice problem analysis, solution-based investigation and prototyping. Working with sponsors, students tackle this practical learning experience by addressing real-world problems, encountering real-world constraints, learning fundamentals of teamwork and applying learned theory.

Eighty-one teams participated this year — a record number — which caused the event to move from the Science Museum of Virginia, where it has been held previously, to the much larger Siegel Center.

“I thank everybody for participating,” Ward said. “This has been a tremendous venue, and I personally have been very blown away by the quality of the projects.”

About 60 to 70 percent of this year’s project ideas came from outside the walls of the School of Engineering, said Philip O’Connor, corporate relations officer. “We have a lot of people from the allied health and medical schools as well as industry, so it’s a great partnership between industry getting work done, to an extent, and students working on real-world problems and working on a team,” he said.

“This is important because students broadened their thinking beyond their disciplines to tackle more complex problems and to address them in ways that involve students from more than one department,” Boyan said.

The list of 2016 Capstone Design “Excellence in Design” awardees can be found at http://www.egr.vcu.edu/senior-capstone-design/senior-design-expo/2016-capstone-winners/

A book of each project abstract is available at http://www.egr.vcu.edu/senior-capstone-design/2015-2016-projects/project-abstracts/.

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