Engineering Students Solve for Real-World Problems at 2026 Expo

More than 95 senior Capstone Design projects filled the floor of Bud Walton Arena, as the U of A's College of Engineering opened its annual Engineering Expo to the public for two hours of head-to-head judging. 

The April 23 event is the culmination of the senior design sequence, in which student teams across five engineering disciplines spend their final year solving problems posed by industry, healthcare and research partners. 

By Expo night, the work is finished. The challenge is showcasing it. 

"We designed Expo to put students in front of the public for a reason," said Robert Saunders, associate department head of student success in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who serves as the college's capstone lead.  

"Anyone can present to a professor. Standing in front of a stranger and explaining, in a few minutes, why your design solves a real problem, that's the skill employers tell us they need, and it's the skill that's hardest to teach in a lecture hall." 

That communication challenge is something Heather Walker, a chemical engineering faculty member who has judged the event for four years, looks for closely. So is the substance behind it. 

"We want to see relevance to real-world problems, because we want to see that we're educating our students to enter the workforce and be able to contribute meaningfully right away," Walker said. "Good technical designs, along with financial analysis, environmental impacts ... a full picture of how they put everything together that we've taught them into a project that could be implemented in the field." 

This year's projects spanned that whole picture. Sponsors included NASA, Dassault Falcon Jet, Core Brewing Co., Onyx Coffee, Samaritan's Purse, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and a range of regional manufacturers and startups. Projects ranged from a sample-collection prototype designed for the metallic asteroid 16-PSYCHE to a hand-held device that lifts 24 cans at a time off a Core Brewing packaging line. 

The night's official judging came down to the public. Almost 500 votes cast by attendees decided three winners. 

Taking third place, the Fruit Ninja team from biological engineering presented a computer-vision-guided prototype for automating strawberry decalyxing. 

"The Fruit Ninja project aimed to make food processing more economically efficient for small to mid-sized businesses," said team member Alex Salonen. "By automating a menial task like cutting strawberry tops, labor can be reallocated to a task more worth the cost. Combining computer vision with food processing took us outside the traditional scope of our discipline, and while it took lots of dedication, it was so fulfilling to see it come together." 

Team members were Kayla King, Jabe Hayden Lovett, Alex Salonen and Sam Vinson. 

Second place went to the Go Baby Go Car team from mechanical engineering for a modified ride-on car designed to give children with mobility limitations independent movement during early childhood. The team built the car through a partnership with the joint UAMS/U of A Occupational Therapy doctoral program, which connects student teams with families whose children need adaptive mobility devices. 

"This spring, the GBG team took a risk in the development of a pediatric recreational device by utilizing additive manufacturing technologies, or 3D printing, helping us achieve our primary goal of making a positive impact in a child's physical, mental and social development," said team member Matthew Carr. "Our work on this project, in collaboration with the UAMS Occupational Therapy Department, was well worth the many hours of design, analysis and assembly, all teaching us one of the many ways that fundamental engineering principles can be used to change lives." 

Team members were Joshua Cady, Matthew Carr, Brian Critchfield, Joan Garcia and Lathan Dingus. 

The first-place poster winner was the Tissue Processing Unit, a mechanical engineering team that designed a portable diagnostic tool to expand access to pathology services in lower-income countries. The project was sponsored by Dr. Philip Ferguson, a Northwest Arkansas pathologist working with Samaritan's Purse and the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons to improve disease diagnosis in regions where tissue processing is unavailable.  

The team was part of a larger cross-disciplinary build that also drew on electrical, biomedical and computer science engineering students. 

"The aim of this project was to develop an affordable tissue processing unit, bringing the cost for this stage of biopsy preparation from $80,000 to $1,500," said team member Megan Taylor. "This project gave us valuable firsthand experience in iterative design and design for assembly. Knowing this project will contribute to disease control in previously unreachable communities makes the hours we spent worth it." 

Team members: Emma VanCleve, Emma Paulus, Logan Pierce, Ethan Pruitt and Megan Taylor. 

The three winning projects share a sponsor in common: someone who came to the College of Engineering with a problem they needed solved. 

For Walker, the cross-disciplinary visibility is part of what makes Expo work. "This is one of the only things the college does where the different disciplines of engineering see each other's work," she said. "It raises the bar." 

It also gives students a moment they don't get in a classroom. "They're really proud of their work," Walker said. "Sometimes, if the only people who see it are the people in the department, it's not as rewarding. It's exciting to present their projects outside their department, so that they can hear other people say, 'Hey, that's really interesting, what you're doing.'" 

A full project directory by discipline is available at https://engineeringexpo.uark.edu/. 

About the College of Engineering: The University of Arkansas College of Engineering is the state's largest engineering school, offering graduate and undergraduate degrees, online studies and interdisciplinary programs. It enrolls more than 4,700 students and employs more than 150 faculty and researchers along with nearly 200 staff members. Its research enterprise generated $47 million in new research awards in Fiscal Year 2025. The college's strategic plan, Vision 2035, seeks to build the premier STEM workforce in accordance with three key objectives: initiating lifelong student success, generating transformational and relevant knowledge, and becoming the destination of choice among educators, students, staff, industry, alumni and the community. As part of this, the college is increasing graduates and research productivity to expand its footprint as an entrepreneurial engineering platform serving Arkansas and the world. The college embraces its pivotal role in driving economic growth, fueling innovation and educating the next generation of engineers, computer scientists and data scientists to address current and future societal challenges.