Projects Under NDA
NDA Engineering Department Senior Design Teams
Senior Design 2022 – Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Team 06  |
Team 06 Ally Brogan |
Faculty Advisor(s) Yu Lei Non-UConn Advisor Zev Kartiganer |
Sponsor (Text) Other Other Sponsor (Text) Robust Product Development Sponsor Image  |
|
APPEAR |
||||
Description With the CoVid-19 pandemic, the medical field is pursuing new avenues to fight viral infections. To study their behavior and how to best combat them, many cell-based trials must be conducted before human trials can be implemented. As the ongoing pandemic has shown, shortages affect all aspects of day-to-day life, including medical research that is critical in the fight against CoVid. This project aims to infect a non-mammalian cell with a mammalian virus. The project's success would open many doors in medical research allowing researchers to simulate the effects of a virus on people without having to endanger human test subjects. The project explores the life cycle and means of infection of a specific virus provided by Robust Product Development. Robust Product Development also provided genetically modified yeast cells as the potential host for the virus. This project relies on theoretical technology; bacteria and other non-mammalian cells can be genetically modified to present virus-specific receptor proteins. Once the genetically modified cells are exposed to this virus, the genetically modified bacteria can be infected (can be the host) of this virus. Although the theory is valid, we have been tasked with generating proof-of-principle. |
||||
|
||||
Senior Design 2022 – Civil and Environmental Engineering Team 12  |
Team 12 Jacob Videira |
Faculty Advisor(s) Dr. Wei Zhang Non-UConn Advisor None |
Sponsor (Text) Prime AE Other Sponsor (Text) Sponsor Not Avaiable Sponsor Image  |
|
Rehabilitation of Bridge No. 03641 |
||||
Description In this project the team has fully designed and analyzed the stringer and girder system running underneath the bridge as well as the deck running on top of the girder system. The team has described repairs and replacements to all other elements in the bridge including the rest of the superstructure, the substructure, the fiberglass sidewalk and the railroad shielding. In this project the team split into two teams team one has worked on the superstructure girder/stringer design and analysis while team two has worked on the deck design and analysis. The teams used external sources such as the CTDOT BDM, AASHTO codes, Microstation, SPSlab, MathCAD/Excel and Google Drive and other minor sources to fully obtain everything the group needed. |
||||
|
||||
Senior Design 2022 – Management & Engineering for Manufacturing Team 14  |
Team 14 John Henry Breen |
Faculty Advisor(s) Craig Calvert, Frank Cunha Non-UConn Advisor Raymond Mostowy |
Sponsor (Text) NUWC Other Sponsor (Text) Sponsor Not Avaiable Sponsor Image  |
|
Hydraulic Pressure Trace Analysis for Bearing Degradation Detection |
||||
Description Many complex mechanical systems that operate in the ocean use hydraulic actuators. Due to this harsh environment, the complex mechanical systems have to handle ever increasing friction from sea growth build up, calcareous deposits, and other environmental impacts. Typically the hydraulic actuator is located in a dry space and the hydraulic operating pressures can be monitored. However, the mechanical operating linkage is often times located in seawater and inaccessible. Normally, troubleshooting can only be accomplished by determining if the mechanical linkage is moving or not. Slow degradation of the system may not be seen until there is a stall condition at maximum hydraulic operating pressure. Monitoring of the hydraulic pressures might be able help determine alert values to pinpoint specific bearing degradation prior to stall. The objectives of this project are to develop a dynamic model of a hydraulically operated mechanical linkage to determine hydraulic pressure traces for normal operation and for troubleshooting of bearing failure modes. |
||||
|
||||
Senior Design 2022 – Computer Science & Engineering Team 20  |
Team 20 WingSheng Sze |
Faculty Advisor(s) Dongjin Song Non-UConn Advisor Jon Hill |
Sponsor (Text) Other Other Sponsor (Text) Boehringer Ingelheim Sponsor Image  |
|
Boehringer Ingelheim Natural Language Processing Software |
||||
Description A web application integrated with a BERT-based natural language processing model fine-tuned for question and answering. The natural language processing model answers questions to various pharmaceutical focused research questions. The application's user-interface is stream-lined to provide ease of usage for users that are experienced and inexperienced with the system. The design of the user interface ensures a lack of experience is not detrimental on a user's effectiveness with the system. The application aims to ensure ease of use by providing relevant and probable results while requiring minimal input from the user. The application utilizes existing data for question and answering to fine-tune the performance of the model to account for various phrasing and speech for how to analyze a question. To collect data and find ways to improve the quality of query results, the application also includes a user feedback form. The feedback form attempts to gauge user opinions on the relevance and quality of results along with the number of responses from the model that correct out of all results that are returned by the model. |
Figure One  |
|||
|
||||
Senior Design 2022 – Computer Science & Engineering Team 25  |
Team 25 Ethan Mann |
Faculty Advisor(s) Seung-Hyun Hong Non-UConn Advisor Rick Ryan |
Sponsor (Text) Other Other Sponsor (Text) Pitney Bowes Sponsor Image  |
|
Gamification of Data Capture and Analysis from Physical Objects |
||||
Description Pitney Bowes is a global technology company providing commerce solutions that power billions of transactions. Clients around the world, including 90 percent of the Fortune 500, rely on the accuracy and precision delivered by Pitney Bowes solutions, analytics, and APIs in all aspects of shipping, from eccomerce fulfillment to international shipping. As commerce has evolved information about a package or mail piece has become almost important as the item itself. The USPS has continued to place more and more data within barcodes on envelopes and packages. This data can be used to gain insights into the behaviors of the shippers, carriers and technology providers. Pitney Bowes has initiated several programs to encourage employees to send images of the mail and packages they receive to a central location for analysis, but each one quickly lost steam and engagement dropped. Our goal is to gamify the process of scanning labels on mail and packages to increase user engagement and provide crucial data for Pitney Bowes to use to improve their services. The platform will be an app on users phones with a cloud-hosted backend that keeps track of teams and points as well as decoding and parsing the images submitted. |
||||
|
||||
Senior Design 2022 – Mechanical Engineering Team 39  |
Team 39 Joshua Desjardins |
Faculty Advisor(s) Reza Sheikhi Non-UConn Advisor Erik Freidenfelds |
Sponsor (Text) Pfizer Other Sponsor (Text) Sponsor Not Avaiable Sponsor Image  |
|
Energy Consumption and Efficiency Initiatives for Building 220 and 200 |
||||
Description In a pursuit to assess energy consumption of Buildings 220 & 200 (laboratory & office space) at Pfizer’s research and development site in Groton, CT, we investigate the major consumers of electricity, steam and chilled water use. We then identify opportunities for improvement which will translate to a reduction in energy consumption. Pfizer desires to receive a comprehensive report which identifies energy consumption and opportunities for energy efficiency initiatives within Buildings 220 & 200. These energy initiatives will allow Pfizer to reduce the consumption of steam, chilled water and electricity while maintaining a safe and effective workplace that complies with regulatory requirements in both their labs and office buildings. Our group determined initiatives based on the primary usage of each building. Building 220 is lab-based, so our solution is to look at minimizing the energy usage of what draws the most power in a laboratory setting - the fume hood and air handling units which maintain the air quality in the environment. Keeping a laboratory safe and surrounding areas free of potentially contaminated air is of utmost importance, though this process also consumes a great deal of energy. In laboratory buildings, fume hoods can account for upwards of 60% of the total electricity usage and as such are a primary focus of our energy reduction plan. In Building 200, filled with offices, a cafe and gym, our focus is to reduce the plug load of equipment such as computers, printers, and other miscellaneous electronic devices that collectively drain large amounts of power on a daily basis, amounting to upwards of 11% of total energy usage which is largely not necessary and can be lowered without affecting work performance of the employees. Looking at both buildings as a whole, smaller ideas regarding upgrading automation systems such as implementing automatic window shading systems and improved lighting systems, both modern bulbs and occupancy sensing technology, |
Figure One  Figure Two  |
|||
|
||||
