August 28, 2005
By: Andrew Pratt
Undergraduate
students in the University of Virginia School of Engineering
and Applied Science have been writing theses in their final
year for more than a century. But it is safe to say that
when William Mynn Thornton conceived of the project just
after becoming the School's first dean in 1904, he had no
idea students would be doing cutting-edge research in medical
chemistry, radio communications, and distributed computing
so early in their careers.
In 1904, powered flight was in its infant stages and transistors,
molecular biology, and space travel were decades away. But
the belief that the tackling of substantial projects is
the best preparation for burgeoning engineers has remained
unchanged in the intervening years. More than a decade ago,
the School expanded the scope of the thesis project by establishing
the annual Undergraduate Research and Design Symposium.
"The Symposium is the forum for us to showcase the
12 most outstanding thesis projects undertaken by our graduating
engineering students to the University and industrial communities,"
says James Aylor, dean of the School of Engineering and
Applied Science.
Held each spring, the competition begins with a panel of
Engineering School faculty who review every submitted thesis
and tap a number of them for presentation at the symposium.
A second panel of judges, drawn from the faculty and the
technology industry, review the presentations and recognize
the winners with cash awards and plaques-and they are consistently
awed by what they see. "Everyone, especially the industrial
attendees, has been extremely impressed with the students'
depth of knowledge and the confidence and poise that they
exhibited during their presentations," notes Dean Aylor.
The honored work represents a broad swath of the academic
interests of the School's undergraduates.
"Over the years, the quality of the projects-and of
the students that have undertaken the projects-has been
amazing," says Dean Aylor. Spring 2005 was no different.
Projects from the graduating class ranged in scale from
the molecular to the macro. Nathan Lewis, Biomedical Engineering,
the third-place individual winner, researched the mechanisms
by which drug compounds alter the way calcium moves through
the body. One of the team projects-a collaboration among
Andrea Aliberti, Jef Benbanaste, Seon-Ho Choi, Isabelle
Estripeaut, James Perry and Daniel Streufert-was the development
of a business-process model for planning highway construction.
In her first-place individual project, titled "The
Viscoelastic Properties of Receptor-Specific Membrane Tethers,"
Johanne Python, Biomedical Engineering, studied the elastic
properties of specially engineered membrane tethers that
can replicate the targeting and adhesion behavior of white
blood cells that attach to areas of inflammation. The first-place
team of Steve Driskill, Amin Mehr, Ben Roberts and Brent
Schavitz worked to optimize electromagnetic technology for
a railgun accelerator that could have space and military
applications.
The Undergraduate Research Design Symposium is held each
Spring in the Dome Room of the Rotunda. The event is free
and open to the public. Additional information on the symposium
is available at http://www.seas.virginia.edu/news/designsymposium2005.php
