Finding problems, designing solutions

Oversized balloons and dance music beckon visitors inside to celebrate a year of innovative projects developed by students from a wide range of SEAS courses. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell/Harvard SEAS)

Members of the Harvard SEAS Racing Team maneuvered the chassis of their solar-powered car through the crowd and cheers erupted from the bleachers where throngs of engineering science students watched all-terrain-vehicles battle for points on a raised obstacle course.

With blue sky and wind-tossed balloons outside the tent on the Science Center Plaza, there was an atmosphere of festivity inside at the fourth annual Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) Design & Project Fair. The controlled chaos of the May 6th fair offered the Harvard community and general public a taste of the wide range of projects developed during the school year at SEAS.

Melissa Chan ’15 explained how she and teammates Karen Kennedy ’17 and Ibrahim Muhammad ’15 tackled infant jaundice in developing countries for their project in CS179, The Design of Useful and Usable Interactive Systems. The trio created software that monitors the status of remote infant incubators and alerts equipment donors when hardware maintenance or replacement is required. As is commonly the case for design projects originating in SEAS courses, the group will continue working on their prototype even after final grades have been submitted. Kennedy and her teammates plan to partner with a local nonprofit design firm and do user testing in Haiti and Vietnam.

“This has been a really fulfilling project,” said Niamh Durfee ’16 a student in CS171, a data visualization course taught by Alexander Lex. Durfee’s team created an interactive display of Hubway bike sharing usage over the past two years.

“Visualizations are becoming increasingly important and it’s nice to have such an applicable skill,” agreed teammate Lexi Smith ’16. Durfee is currently involved in computational chemistry research and plans to use her new skills to build a visualization that allows for easy protein comparison.

Niamh Durfee ’16 and Lexi Smith ’16 demonstrate Hubway bike sharing usage patterns over the past two years. The longest trip was 107 days (equipment mishap perhaps) and the oldest user was 81. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell/Harvard SEAS)

Ryan Kerr ’17, Evan Sandhoefner ’17, and Meng Ting ’17 demonstrated their interactive map of the American electoral process over the past 100 years. Tiffany Cheng and Spyros Ampanados, both students at the Graduate School of Design, displayed Hydrocrop Monitor, a custom-built tool designed to help Corner Stalk, a hydroponic farm in East Boston, understand trends and areas for improvement embedded in the volumes of sensor data the farm collects.

Some SEAS classes challenge students to define and develop their own concepts. Others involve a partnership between faculty and students, such as ES96, Engineering Problem Solving and Design Project, taught by James Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry. Building on Anderson’s existing research and finding areas of improvement, Crystal Stowell ’15 and Nick Bobbs ’16 developed a weather-balloon tethered device for measuring ozone loss in the stratosphere. Anderson plans to embed the students’ instrument in an atmospheric monitoring mission targeted for launch in 2017.

Michael D. Smith, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and John H. Finley, Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was an early visitor to the design fair, pausing at a high-tech sandbox constructed by the SEAS Active Learning Laboratories. The earth science visualization device lets users create and modify their own topographic model with the sweep of a hand. Anas Chalah, Executive Director of Active Learning, explained how his team improved upon an existing design developed by UC Davis engineers. It uses a Microsoft Kinect and a projector to turn a child’s toy into a classroom tool that teaches geologic and hydrologic concepts.

“We’re really excited to partner with other faculty at SEAS and find new uses for this technology," says Chalah. "The sky is the limit when it comes to what we can invent. We like to think of ourselves as the eyes and ears for the faculty, discovering what new learning tools are out there and then customizing them to make them our own.”

The Active Learning Labs display also featured ornate typographic symbols precisely carved out of 2-inch aluminum by the school’s new water-jet cutter and a fleet of mobile fabrication carts available for indoor or outdoor use as needed.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith tests out a newly-built "augmented reality" sandbox designed to teach students environmental science concepts. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell/Harvard SEAS)

During the fair, Harry R. Lewis, Interim Dean of SEAS and Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, presented the first-ever Dean’s Award for Outstanding Senior Engineering Projects. Ten students in the SB engineering program received honorable mention citations for their capstone ES100 projects, and four were awarded the Dean’s Award.

“One of the most exhilarating aspects of the SEAS curriculum—for students and faculty—is the opportunity to make stuff,” Lewis observed. “Sometimes it’s really cool, quirky, or fun. Often, it is work that will help solve a real problem and make a significant impact on people’s lives.”