In 1999, The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) introduced efforts towards producing alternative chemical energy sources by starting an annual student chemical engineering competition, the AIChE Chem-E-Car Competition. This competition revolves around building a small-scale (shoebox size) car that is powered by energy produced by a chemical reaction. A chemical reaction must also be used to stop the vehicle. Students compete with teams from other universities in guiding their car as close as possible to a certain target distance.

Healthcare providers around the world experience inconsistent plasma supply used for trauma victims and surgery. The limitation of the existing plasma supply system is that it is entirely reliant on donors, who don’t consistently donate plasma, resulting in large fluctuations with long periods of low plasma stocks. This project aims to help mitigate the issue of the inconsistent plasma supply the healthcare system experiences by utilizing bioreactors and modified E. coli to create recombinant human serum albumin.

Human serum albumin (HSA) a cellular protein profoundly important in maintaining health and combating disease. It is derived from large pools of human plasma, so access to the protein is heavily dependent on available and acceptable donations. The medical community’s annual albumin request is about 500 metric tons worldwide, and the current source supply cannot meet such high demand. Additionally, such sources of albumin present potential dangers due to difficulty with ensuring donor traceability, in terms of an individual’s viral status.

We aimed to create an on-demand, portable water treatment plant housed within a 1ft³ cube with a budget of $1,500. The spirit of our project stemmed from the 2022 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) ChemE Cube competition. The primary objective was to purify 25 liters of water per day adhering to EPA and international drinking water quality standards. As a humanitarian effort, our goal was to streamline water purification processes so that water-insecure regions can purify worst-case scenario water with minimal equipment and energy costs.

The US Energy Information Administration estimates that up to 30% of natural gas (NG) reserves are flared into the atmosphere, producing an average of 111,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year. NG is primarily composed of methane and is flared to create CO₂, which is a less potent greenhouse gas. NG is often flared when it is stranded in an isolated location, making recovery economically unviable. To combat the under-utilization of NG as an energy resource, we designed a modular process to harvest and convert it into useful, liquid fuel products.

Patients with below-the-knee amputations who use prosthetic legs often have issues with the fit of the prosthetic leg due to the changing volume of the residual limb throughout the day. To date, there is no compact, affordable device available to the general amputee community that easily and accurately measures volume change throughout the day, alerting the patient that changes need to be made with the amount of prosthetic socks worn, or alerting a device inside the prosthetic to automatically adjust for them.

Modern cervical cancer screening has many problems, specifically the lack of accessibility to women’s healthcare, current healthcare disparities, patient pain and discomfort, accuracy of testing, and the lack of education and increased stigma surrounding women’s reproductive care. We aimed to increase patient satisfaction, create more engagement in clear communication between the healthcare professional and the patient, and have higher rates of women in lower socioeconomic areas engaging in consistent screening. 

In collaboration with Mayo Clinic, we developed an absorbable surgical foam and drain to address challenges in postoperative wound care. Current practices with surgical drains, though effective in many cases, have limitations that hinder their ability to comprehensively manage complications, particularly in large surgical wounds. The occurrence of seromas, a common postoperative complication, underscores the demand for innovative solutions to enhance the efficiency of wound healing processes.

Our objective was to create a rocking motion device for a rocking chair, automating its movement. We developed the device to help people with autism, including kids, who need a constant motion to relax and fall asleep without supervision.

While the prevalence of shock refractory ventricular fibrillation is low, survival remains incredibly rare. Different defibrillation methods have been proposed to improve outcomes, but the double sequential external defibrillation (DSED) technique is the most promising. We aimed to produce a device, that can deliver the same functions as a manual defibrillator and employ the DSED technique without the need for an extra defibrillator.