Engineering Students Present Research at Honors Symposium

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Dean McMath speaks to student presenters at the Freshman Engineering Program Honors Research Symposium.

On Saturday, April 20, Honors College engineering students presented research projects they had been working on for the past two semesters. Ninety-one students and 27 faculty mentors participated in the symposium. The students’ work was judged by a panel of former symposium students, teaching assistants and engineering graduate students. Awards were given for Best Paper, Best Poster and Best Presentation in each of ten tracks, and a Best Overall Project Award was given to one team.

“I hope you appreciate your faculty mentors, who are inviting you into their world of research,” said Bob McMath, dean of the Honors College, in the keynote address at the event. “Thanks to their efforts, and yours, the University of Arkansas is building a national reputation for outstanding undergraduate research.”

Tyler Beneke and Austin Cash received the Best Overall Project award for their project, titled “Design and Analysis of the Prototype Container of the Physical Internet.” Beneke and Cash worked with industrial engineering professor Russell Meller. Their project involved creating a standardized modular container that could be used by the trucking industry. A standardized container would increase efficiency by protecting materials during transport and helping trucking companies ensure that their trucks are full.

The students used special software to figure out how to make a box that was lightweight, robust and easily collapsible. Their box also needed a lid, and the boxes needed to have interlocking parts so they could attach to each other. They had to determine which materials to use and perform cost analyses and stress tests.

Beneke, who will enter the industrial engineering program in the fall, explained that this project taught her a lot about engineering. “I didn’t realize that everything is so interconnected,” she explained. “It takes a group of different kinds of engineers to produce something.”

Cash, who will be studying mechanical engineering, explained he was excited to be able to contribute to Meller’s broader research project, which involves the Physical Internet, an effort to increase the efficiency and sustainability of transportation logistics.  “It's really cool to have worked on something of such magnitude,” said Cash, who plans to continue to work with Meller, refining the design of the container. “The thought of being part of something bigger has given me a new perspective on things.”

Brett Schauwecker and Kendell Whitehead received the Best Poster and Best Presentation awards for the Healthcare Track #3 with their project, which is entitled “Textile Integrated Mobile Electronic Cardiac Monitoring System - The e-vest.”  This team tested a prototype of a vest that can be used to monitor athletes, heart patients and other at-risk groups for early signs of cardiac arrest. Schauwecker and Kendell worked with electrical engineering professor Vijay Varadan and graduate student Prashanth Shyamkumar to compare the performance of the e-vest to a traditional ECG test.

Whitehead explained that he was excited to see that engineers can deal with such a broad range of topics. “One of the things that attracted me to mechanical engineering is the way you can take engineering and apply it to unexpected things, like sports,” he explained.

A third project, Wi-Fi Positioning Using Support Vector Machines, received Best Poster and Best Presentation in the Product Design Track #2. Brian Jekel and Sean Street worked with electrical engineering professor Jingxian Wu for this project, which involved using the variability of wi-fi signals to create a three-dimensional GPS system. “It’s been one of the best experiences I’ve had at college so far,” said Jekel.

A complete list of award winners can be found on the College of Engineering blog.