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Funding the ideas of engineering students is fostering hands-on ingenuity.

THOMAS EDISON left a trail of hundreds of unsuccessful attempts at a light bulb before he finally achieved illumination. When asked by a reporter how it felt to fail so many times, Edison famously took offense—each experiment, he said, was an important step closer to incandescent light.

It is that spirit of undaunted pursuit that Renjeng Su, dean of the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, hopes to promote in the college’s new Innovation Program. Giving engineering students the freedom to fail might be the best way to stoke their imagination, he believes. 

“We know the creativity is there; it just needs to be nurtured and unleashed,” says Su.

Local entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and companies agree. Funding for the student projects is provided solely through donations, including those made by Jeannine Cowles, Glumac, Henry W. Schuette, Tektronix, TriQuint Semiconductor,  and Howard S. Wright Constructors.

THE INNOVATION PROGRAM is off to an energetic start. Twenty-three projects involving more than 50 students have received a $1,000 grant to explore their ideas. As expected, some projects are blossoming; others have been shelved.

“We wanted to spread lots of seeds because you never know which ones will grow into something special,” says James McNames, chair of PSU’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Innovation Program director. 

With the seeds planted, McNames is trying a counter-culture cultivation strategy—eschewing oversight and quelling competition—that stands in stark contrast to similar programs at other universities. Even more unusual, students are not judged on whether their project succeeds or fails. 

“College is about what they learn rather than what they produce,” says McNames. 

And teaching students how to confidently pursue potential fixes to society’s problems strenghtens the Maseeh College’s role as an economic engine.

Soap + water = saved lives

Engineering undergraduates rarely get the opportunity to work on international-scale projects, much less ones with a humanitarian focus. Yet when Mercy Corps, a Portland-based international aid organization, needed a way to confirm that hand-washing stations and latrines installed in Jakarta, Indonesia, were improving sanitation practices, it turned to Engineering at PSU. The Innovation Program provided Anndee Huff and other team members with the resources to design sensors able to monitor water usage and performance for Mercy Corps. “What’s unique is that we included a remote sensing device that can send the data back to Portland via the Internet so that we can analyze it here,” says Huff. The project has since grown, with sensors possibly going to Haiti, and the project has already impacted Huff’s career aspirations. The trip to Indonesia to install the sensors confirmed her desire to work in international development. “If we want to help people,” she says, “we have to be open to new innovative ideas that will be needed to save lives.”

Breathing easier

Creating solutions to problems faced in developing countries requires a unique set of sensibilities. Designs must factor in the lack of reliable power sources and available replacement parts—realities that can, for example, render donated medical equipment useless. One Innovation Program team set out to develop a low-power, durable oxygen device able to deliver the 40 percent oxygen purity necessary to save patient lives. Inspired by a NASA-born idea for an oxygen concentrator, the team, including senior Evan Rhead, achieved their goal, but it was definitely an iterative process. “We took two steps forward and one step back as we had revelations about how big the instrument needed to be, what kind of compressor to use, and how to reconfigure the valve design—but that’s the norm for product development,” says Rhead. He hopes that a new team of students will build on their success and get the oxygen concentrator put into use. “That would feel amazing,” he says.

Stealth copter

Super spies all over the world would kill for a gadget like this. With its four mini-propellers spinning, the robotic copter being developed by students flies autonomously—black ops style. The quadcopter must be able to navigate unknown buildings, retrieve a flash drive, and emerge undetected for the team, led by senior Greg Haynes, to win the International Aerial Robotics Competition in August 2012.

“We are in a competition where the problem is not yet solved—so we are helping advance the state of the art,” says Haynes. With the support of the Innovation Program, they were able to simply buy the frame and direct their creative energies toward the big hurdle—figuring out how to map an unseen building while flying. The solution requires a smattering of sensors, a dollop of math know-how, and a dash of artificial intelligence experience. If they do win, they will have turned a $4,000 investment into a $30,000 prize. That’s some lucrative, yet legal, espionage.

Rocket control

The PSU Aerospace Society is a group of 20-odd rocket enthusiasts achieving milestones that elude professional companies. Their ultimate goal? Putting a nano-satellite into orbit. “For an amateur group, that’s completely crazy,” says junior Chris Mullens. Funny thing is, with three different Innovation Program grants in hand, the team is systematically ticking off the remaining hurdles. Now that they have achieved control of the inevitable roll as a rocket speeds toward space, they are working on a guidance system to steer the rocket as it hurdles to 528,000-feet. “To get this thing to punch through the atmosphere into orbit, we can’t shoot it straight up or it will just fall straight back down,” says Mullens. Rather, the rocket has to move tangentially to the Earth. “To do that, we need to steer the thing,” says Mullens. “If we pull this off, we’re going to have a whole lot of street credit—personally and professionally, which would be pretty cool.”

Gaining traction

Josh Yasbek is a sophomore, a motorcyclist, and a tinkerer. He’s using his newfound engineering skills to promote faster, safer motorcycling. A traction control gauge, he decided, would be ideal since losing traction while rounding a corner is the most common cause of crashes. Existing wheel-based traction control systems electronically cut engine or braking power, but they work abruptly and eliminate the rider from the decision-making. Yasbek combined sensors on the suspension system with LED sensors inside his helmet that allow the rider to see weight distribution data while going through a corner. Unfortunately, the visual data proved distracting. While the gauge may not be the real-time read-out he envisioned, Yasbek realized it still has utility. He is now coupling sensors with a global positioning system to create a training tool to help racers optimize their driving. “Going from idea to product is a bigger process than what I expected,” he says.

Wastewater wetland 

Graduate student Robert Thompson’s idea for an artificial wetland was sparked by a challenge. His boss, an environmentally conscious Portland landscaper, asked Thompson to engineer a way to keep the nutrients, oil, and grease washed from his equipment out of the storm drains. So, Thompson built a 100-foot wetland. It consists of three cells, each the size of a twin bed sitting side-by-side. In the first two cells, Thompson manipulates the microbial community doing the dirty work of ridding pollutants by controlling the oxygen-content. The third cell returns the water to the ground, helping to recharge the water table. Thompson’s tests proved his system works so well that he’s writing a grant to install a wastewater wetland on PSU’s campus. For a paltry $1,000, the Innovation Program fostered the makings of a potential business for Thompson, helped the University explore a sustainable wastewater treatment solution, and inspired additional student projects. “That’s a pretty good return on our investment,” says Su.

Virginia Gewin is a freelance science journalist based in Portland.

Top photo: Students Jen Hanni, Eric Dinger, and Jonathan Harker monitor but do not control the mission of their autonomous quadcopter. Photo by Kelly James.

Second photo: Children are always present as engineering student Anndee Huff helps set up a montoring system for sanitation stations in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo by professor Evan Thomas.

Third photo: Creativity blossoms as small grants fund student projects, including a prototype of a low-power medical oxygen machine by students Anndee Huff (left) and Evan Rhead.

Fourth photo: Amateur rocket systems developed by students hope to someday break out of Earth’s atmosphere.

Fifth photo: Josh Yasbek tests and reads his motorcycle traction gauge through sensors inside his helmet. (photo by Bob Edwards)