Senior Projects Expo, April 23, highlights tomorrow’s business & technology leaders

HOBOKEN, N.J. ― The creative inventiveness of seniors at Stevens Institute of Technology will be on display during the 2008 Senior Project Expo, April 23. Demonstrations of projects in chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, computer engineering, civil, environmental and ocean engineering, business and technology, and complex robotics and embedded intelligent systems highlight this year’s Expo.

Approximately 80 team projects, many featuring leading-edge, interactive technologies, will be viewable on the Stevens campus at the Canavan Arena, located at the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. Athletic Center, between 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m., April 23. The presentation is open to the press and the public. For directions and parking information please call or e-mail the contact listed below.

As part of their degree fulfillment, teams of graduating seniors demonstrate projects they have jointly engineered, often involving complex mechanical and electronic devices, as well as virtual prototypes. In many cases the development process has been under way for well over a year. A number of the teams have attracted industry sponsorship to assist with development; and in some cases, the students have won commitments from those sponsors to adapt their projects for real-world industrial applications. Moreover, a variety of patents are derived each year from Senior Project Expo efforts, as with the recently publicized Stevens Proof of Concept (SPOC), a hand-held device (and now company) designed by Stevens students in 2005 to locate the precise source of muscle pain, in collaboration with Dr. Norman Marcus of the NYU Medical Center.

Project highlights:

BridgeNet: This project demonstrates a technology system that remotely detects strains in bridge-structures to head off bridge failure. (“Have you driven on the Pulaski Skyway recently?” asks one of the team, while illustrating the concept.) Team members include Tim Garner, Chris Falato, Ryan Marone and Vijay Jadav.

InStream Video: This team is studying ways to increase the disruptive marketplace impact of a start-up technology company with its origins at Stevens, InStream Media LLC. The company produces a technology that will revolutionize digital advertising by embedding messages in video media that are retrievable through a remote point-click system, which leaves the video being watched uninterrupted, but will deliver product information and promotional materials direct to one’s e-mail or computer hard drive. Team members include Lauren Buroojy, Dora Enright and Jean Matusiak.

Rising Tide Capital: This team is working with two 2003 Harvard grads to create the NY-Metro Region’s own version of Grameen Bank, originated in Bangladesh by Nobel-Prize winner Muhammed Yunus. Yunus invented the technique of MicroFinancing – lending money to businesses with no more than five workers, with amazing results among poverty-stricken populations. The two Harvard grads, Alex Forrester and Alfa Demmellash, have joined with a team of Stevens Business & Technology seniors to perfect the technology, finance infrastructure and business-plan aspects of Yunus’ concept. The team will demonstrate models of MicroLending as a powerful potential cure for poverty and dependency in the American inner city. Team members include Nicole Moldovan, Swati Agrawal, Catherine Kim, JoAnne Pojuner, Jennifer Ramirez, Timothy Williams and Johanne Zuleta.

“Senior Design Expo is a festive event that celebrates the inventiveness, creativity and entrepreneurship of Stevens’ students,” said Provost & University VP George P. Korfiatis. “From new kinds of implants and prosthetics developed by biomedical and materials engineering teams, to advanced computer applications for the next wave of hand-held wireless consumer entertainment devices, to smart robots, this day provides a detailed look at the kinds of technologies these young scientists and engineers will be pursuing upon graduation from Stevens.”

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,040 undergraduate and 3,085 graduate students, and a worldwide online enrollment of 2,250, with a full-time tenured/tenure-track faculty of 140 and more than 200 full-time special faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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