2012 D. E. Crow Innovation Prize Winners
Thirteen student teams competed for 20,000 of prize money on May 10, 2013 presenting their proposed projects and inventions to a panel of seven judges.
A Portable water purification system (First Place Prize)
Team Members: Saeid Zanganeh (ECE), Navid Zanjani (ME)
Nanotechnology has the potential to impact many aspects of food and agricultural systems. A high yield fabrication of a unique morphology of ZnO nanoparticles in the form of a thin film has been conceived which has a big potential for use in the public health and food industry. As the first part of this project, the antibacterial and antimicrobial activities of this thin film in a liquid media has been investigated. The objective of this study is to fabricate a low priced water purification system using this new morphology of zinc oxide to help people who do not have access to a safe and permanent water purification system.
Energy Star Retrofit (Second Place Prize)
Team Members: Nishang Gupta (ME, BUS), Dana Boyer (CEE)
Appliance repair is a dying art since it is cheaper to buy a new appliance than to get an old one repaired. We aim to reinvigorate this dying art by flipping the business model upside down and seek to have a constant stream of repairable appliances coming to repair. Using small appliance retail stores that offer appliance removal services for their customers as our supply chain, we can streamline the entire appliance repair process. With a streamlined repair process that saves on labor time, this model will be able to not only repair broken appliances, but to also retrofit them with energy efficient parts for Energy Star certification, to reduce US energy consumption by 600 million kWh annually.
Clamp and Pivot Sawstop (CAPS) System (Third Place Prize)
Team Members: Stephen Harmon (ME) Sam Masciulli (ME)
The implementation of large windows in commercial building projects is fueling a billion dollar business for industrial glazing companies across the country. Window frames arefabricated in a machine shop. Currently, aluminum frame stock is braced against a rail which runs the length of the table. All the cuts of one length must be completed before the footing is relocated for the next cut. When the stock length is not evenly divisible by the working cut length, there is a large “drop piece” remaining. The CAPS system will eliminate non3scrap drop pieces from the operation and the need for a working stockpile, replacing the time consuming and arduous job of handling drop pieces with the quick and easy lift3and3pivot operation of the CAPS system.
Symbolhound (Third Place Prize)
Team Members: Thomas Fedtmose (BUS), David Crane (CSE)
This project entails a search engine specifically designed for programmers that enable searching for nonValphanumeric characters on web searches.