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  • Monday, April 22, 2013 8:25 PM | Anonymous

    Echo of health: Math may reveal children’s heart problems

    It has been said that the heart sometimes sees what is invisible to the eye, but thanks to four Rice University mathematics students, the echocardiograms of patients at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) in Houston may soon reveal something new to the eyes of pediatric cardiologists.

    The students, who are each slated to graduate from Rice next month with degrees in computational and applied mathematics, set out last fall to create a computer program that uses noninvasive echocardiograms to give doctors information that currently can be obtained only with an invasive catheter.

    Sgt. Joey's Lonely Hearts Club Band

    Sgt. Joey's Lonely Hearts Club Band members (from left) Joey Huchette, Hrothgar, Andrew Tilley and (front) Guang Yang.

    The four, who calls themselves “Sgt. Joey’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” created the data analysis software for their senior capstone design project, a program requirement for all engineering students at Rice. The team will present its work Thursday at Rice’s 2013 Engineering Design Showcase and Poster Competition.

    “If someone is already sick, the last thing you want to do is stick things in their heart,” said Sgt. Joey’s team member Hrothgar of Will Rice College.

    “And remember, we’re talking about children here,” said Guang Yang, another team member from Will Rice. “An invasive catheter is actually a lot worse for them than it would be for adults.”

    The team’s goal is to measure blood pressure gradients inside the heart. They were assigned the task after TCH cardiologists brought the problem to the attention of faculty in Rice’s Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics (CAAM).

    heart gradient

    Top: Raw velocity information -- in centimeters per second -- recorded by echocardiogram during a validation test. Middle: Velocity data that has been smoothed using a mathematical function called a spline. Bottom: The pressure gradient obtained from calculations on the velocity data.

    The pressure gradient is a dynamic measure that tells doctors how powerfully the heart is pumping blood. The pressure gradient within the left ventricle undefined the final chamber that blood passes through before it leaves the heart undefined is a particularly useful measure for cardiologists.

    Physicians today can only reliably measure the pressure gradient in the left ventricle with a catheter, a thin probe that must be threaded through a patient’s blood vessels and placed inside the ventricle while the heart is beating.

    Sgt. Joey’s team member Joey Huchette of Martel College said the team’s assignment was to find a way to measure the gradient using the data from echocardiograms, noninvasive heart tests that involve technology similar to that used for sonograms.

    “Heart patients at Texas Children’s undergo echocardiograms regularly anyway, and they are noninvasive,” Huchette said. “Doctors can use the echocardiogram to extract information about the velocity of the blood in the heart. This test tells them how fast the blood is moving toward the probe, and that’s useful, but it’s not as useful as the pressure information is in certain contexts.

    “We’re trying to find if there’s a way that we can turn this readily available information about the velocity of the blood in the heart into this pressure information that is useful diagnostically,” Huchette said.

    Andrew Tilley, a team member from Hanzsen College, said, “Our starting point is the echocardiogram picture, which is basically an array of velocity values. At each pixel, we’re trying to convert velocity to pressure.”

    Guang gets echo

    Sgt. Joey's team member Guang Yang undergoing an echocardiogram at Texas Children's Hospital during validation testing.

    The team found that there were various well-studied equations from fluid dynamics that they could use to attack the problem, and they even found previous studies where doctors had worked out some details of the conversion. However, the equations were very complex, and it took several months to determine whether their goal of using the echocardiogram data was even feasible.

    By Christmas break, the team had worked out the mathematical framework after several meetings with Dr. Elijah Bolin, a third-year fellow in cardiology at TCH; Dr. Craig Rusin, assistant professor of cardiology at TCH; and Dr. Daniel Penny, chief of cardiology at TCH. They are currently trying to validate their model with data from a daylong test at TCH using an invasive catheter in a mechanical heart.

    They’ve also logged hundreds of hours creating and refining their software, which was designed for a user with basic computer skills and a typical PC. The software also needs to deliver results in a visual format that is both useful to cardiologists and easy to interpret in a matter of seconds.

    Sgt. Joey’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band is still working on its project and plan on handing it off to another design team next year. They hope the design can be refined to the point where researchers in Penny’s lab can test the software in an animal model in a side-by-side comparison with catheters.

    “Hopefully, it can help people down the line at some point,” Tilley said. “That possibility is one of the things that made this project interesting to work on.”

     

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    About Jade Boyd

    Jade Boyd is science editor and associate director of news and media relations in Rice University's Office of Public Affairs.


  • Friday, April 12, 2013 9:36 AM | Anonymous

    Team Brittle Bones wins Engineering Design Showcase

    Team Brittle Bones

    Team Brittle Bones won the Excellence in Engineering Prize and $5,000 in the annual Engineering Design Showcase and Poster Competition on April 11. From left: team adviser Ann Saterbak, students Matthew Nojoomi, Nimish Mittal and Sergio Gonzalez, Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen Director Maria Oden and George R. Brown School of Engineering Dean Ned Thomas. Photo by An Le/Luxe Studio Productions


    Team Brittle Bones won the top Excellence in Engineering Design award in the Engineering Design Showcase and Poster Competition April 11 at Rice’s Tudor Fieldhouse.

    The team members – Matthew Nojoomi, Nimish Mittal and Sergio Gonzalez – received a $5,000 grand prize for their robotic assistive reaching mechanism for a patient at Shriners Hospital. They began the project in the freshman engineering class taught by their adviser, Ann Saterbak, a professor in the practice of bioengineering, and continued working on it into their sophomore years.

    “It’s been a long project, and for a long time we haven’t been able to see the end of the project,” Gonzalez said. “It’s been great to finally give him the arm and see him use it, and that it actually works.”

    Prizes of $500 went to teams in the following categories:

    Best Interdisciplinary Design Project undefined Team BioLink.

    Best Conceptual or Computational Design Project – Team AEMEAS Engineers.

    Best Global Health Technologies Engineering Design Project – Team Smooth Saline.

    Best Energy-Related Engineering Design Project – Team W.A.T.T.

    Best Health-Related Engineering Design Project – Team PEDS.

    Best Environment and Sustainability Award – Team DM-Es in a Pod.

    Best Engineering Design Project for Research – Team Hermes.

    Best Gaming, Creative or Innovative Technology Award – Team Illuminate.

    Best Club-Organized Engineering Design Project  – Solar Car Club.

    Best Engineering Design Project by Underclassmen undefined tie: IV Drip and BiliRobust.

    Judges’ and Professors’ Choice Award – Team Brittle Bones.

    Students’ Choice Award – Team Sphygmo.

    The annual public event put on by the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen features senior capstone design and other projects by Rice undergraduates. Read about all the participating teams here.

  • Thursday, April 11, 2013 8:13 PM | Anonymous

    Cheers for a comfy chair

    A new chair developed by engineering students at Rice University will make radiation therapy sessions for cancer patients more comfortable and more effective.

    In cooperation with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, five Rice students have developed a seat that helps patients relax as they stay perfectly still while precise beams of radiation attack tumors. The device is the students’ senior capstone design project, required of most Rice engineering students for graduation.

    Patients seated in the chair face forward with their chests on the chair back and heads resting on a ring. Pads for their knees support their weight, and bars allow them to get a stable grip during the treatment, which can last up to 15 minutes.

    Laurence Court, an assistant professor of radiation physics at MD Anderson, asked Rice to help develop this one component of a comprehensive effort to improve the patient experience. Traditionally, Court said, patients have had to lie down on a bench to be imaged by computed tomography (CT) scanners that pinpoint the location of tumors.

    Rice University engineering students, from left, Samuel Stein, Jina Ko, Sarah Mason and Brandon Nguyen have developed a chair to ease the burden of patients undergoing radiation therapy for cancer. Not pictured: Team member Nathan Han. Photo by Tommy LaVergne

    But the technology is improving, he said, and versions of the cone-beam CT (CBCT) scanners often used for orthodontics are now commonplace for cancer treatment.

    In the new project, rather than move the imaging and radiation equipment around the patient, the patient will move inside the equipment. The bench will be mounted to a turntable and the Rice components will be attached for patients who are more comfortable sitting up than lying down.

    “We do have a chair because sometimes we treat people in an upright position, but it’s sort of prehistoric,” Court said. “If you really can’t lie down and we absolutely must treat you, we would use it, but it’s not a high-tech treatment. Whereas the chair the students have developed will bring seated CT treatments into the modern era, allowing us to position the patients in a more comfortable position while taking advantage of all the imaging available with modern treatment machines.

    “You’d be amazed how much excitement there is here about this device,” he said.

    The members of Team Rad – Sarah Mason, Jina Ko, Nathan Han, Samuel Stein and Brandon Nguyen – picked up the challenge and quickly decided a modified massage chair had potential. The chair was easy to relax in and provided a clear shot at tumors from many positions with CBCT and radiation equipment.

    Rice engineering student Sarah Mason demonstrates the radiation therapy chair developed by students in cooperation with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Photo by Tommy LaVergne

    The team worked closely with Court and their Rice advisers, Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen Director Maria Oden and Matthew Wettergreen, a lecturer in engineering. “Before we did any brainstorming, we set up times for all of us to go (to MD Anderson) and observe, talk to the radiologist, see the current standard of care and the treatment process,” Mason said.

    Mason said patients who are sitting breathe easier and are “less likely to fidget. Also, their tissue is expanded and held more taut, so it’s less likely to shift.”

    The Rice students’ comfy chair is in reality a set of highly adjustable components that attach to the bench. The attachments allow patients to hold still more easily as the machines do their work and can be set to the same positions for repeat sessions. The students used smartphone cameras and apps to track movements as they tested the chair over long periods and found they could not only hold still, but also could get up and reliably get back into the same positions.

    “We put in as many discrete things as possible to make a quick adjustment with few continuous pieces,” Stein said. “The biggest things you would adjust for are height, for which you adjust the chest rest and the head support, and arm length, which is in one of the (interchangeable) chest supports. It should be a really quick process.”

    “The whole thing integrates with our current work process really nicely,” Court said.

    Court said MD Anderson is filing for a patent on the students’ and hospital’s behalf and hopes to have the entire system ready to treat patients in a year.

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    About Mike Williams

    Mike Williams is a senior media relations specialist in Rice University's Office of Public Affairs.

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  • Tuesday, April 09, 2013 8:52 PM | Anonymous

    Two Rice University teams undefined Smooth Saline and Sphygmo undefined shared top prize in the Rice 360° Institute for Global Technologies‘ and Beyond Traditional Borders’ annual Undergraduate Global Health Technology Design Competition April 5.

    The competition, which is in its third year, drew 22 teams from 17 U.S. universities as well as two teams from Jimma University in Ethiopia undefined the competition’s first international student participants.

    Global health design competition winners

    From left, Becky Zaunbrecher of Smooth Saline; Maria Oden, director of Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen; Kathleen Wiest and Jessica Williams, both of Smooth Saline; and Andrew Badachhape, Lauren Luo, Ananta Subramanian and Emily Eggert, all of Sphygmo.

    Smooth Saline, which also took first place earlier this month in Rice’s annual Undergraduate Elevator Pitch Competition, won for its multiuse catheter flushing system that minimizes the risk of saline contamination while reducing costs by at least 50 percent.

    Sphygmo won for its solar-powered blood pressure monitoring system for ambulatory patients. This device automatically and periodically measures blood pressure and alerts patients and staff with auditory and visual alarms if levels are dangerous.

    “This year’s competition was a big success,” said Rice 360° Executive Director Lauren Vestewig Gray. “It is so inspiring to see the incredible work that undergraduate engineers around the world are doing to develop innovative global health technologies. The participation of the Ethiopian teams and the on-site participation of faculty from Jimma University were a milestone this year.”

    This marked the first year that all 20 judges in the competition were drawn from outside of Rice. Four of the 15 judges were from Ethiopia. They were Jimma faculty members Kora Tushune, Bheema Lingaiah and Esayas Alemayehu, as well as Kidest Hailu, country director for the American International Health Alliance Twinning Center.  The Ethiopian experts participated thanks to funding from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Centers for Disease Control-South Africa. Alemayehu’s presentation on water purification technologies in Ethiopia was also a highlight of the day’s events, as was an evening keynote by Andrew Ellington, the Wilson M. and Kathryn Fraser Research Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin.

    Competing teams were judged on how clearly they articulated the global health need that their technology sought to address, as well as on the technical and social feasibility of their proposed solution. Judges also considered each team’s plan to overcome technical and social hurdles associated with their technologies. The Jimma teams competed via pre-recorded videos that were six minutes or less undefined the same time allotted to teams presenting on-site.

    This year’s winning teams were:

    First place – Sphygmo and Smooth Saline, both from Rice.

    Second place – Little Gasp, Tulane University, and Woven Solutions, Clemson University.

    Student’s choice undefined IncuLight, Wright State University.

    Best poster – Otoo, North Carolina State University.

  • Wednesday, March 27, 2013 4:52 PM | Anonymous

    Freshmen design, build Houston Arboretum bridge

    Wednesday, March 27, 2013

    Team Tree Amigos had a bridge to build at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center, and not one of its four members knew the first thing about structural engineering.

    “Nobody involved is planning to go into civil engineering. Some of us had never used power tools. We had our dark periods,” said Kathryn Hokamp, a freshman at Rice University who plans to major in ecology and evolutionary biology, and who served as construction foreman for the engineering design team.

    The students first met last fall in their Introduction to Engineering Design class. The other team members and their tentative majors are Michael Donatti, mechanical engineering; Stephen Phillips, bioengineering; and Katherine Stiles, chemical engineering.

    “We didn’t know each other. We didn’t start out as friends but we learned how to work in a team setting. The chemistry was pretty good. Basically, we were learning how to learn,” Donatti said.

    The staff at the arboretum presented Tree Amigos with a straightforward problem: The low spot between the playground and a nearby pavilion routinely floods after heavy rains. More than a foot of water can accumulate and remain in place for several days. The span had to be at least 13 feet long, not counting the platforms at either end, to bypass the water and mud.

    In their early brainstorming sessions, after three or four visits to the arboretum, the team came up with about 80 potential solutions, some extravagant or ridiculous. Additional meetings with arboretum staff and a review of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s regulations for public playground safety reduced the workable solutions to one. By October they had a final plan for a suspended wooden bridge – one frequently tweaked, however, by contingency.

    The arboretum staff poured the foundation – eight cylinders of concrete, each eight inches in diameter and four feet deep. The team used more than 250 board-feet of lumber, more than 85 percent of which was “repurposed” – that is, recycled from use in previous structures. Thus, their choice of team name: Tree Amigos. They intended the project to be ecologically benign, relying as much as possible on recycled material.

    They also used 400 pounds of concrete, 45 feet of high-test steel chain (with a load limit of 5,400 pounds), more than 400 bolts and other pieces of hardware, eight steel posts and 80 feet of rope (for hand-holds across the span).

    “All of the other teams had, physically speaking, smaller projects. We couldn’t really prototype anything. It was just too big,” Stiles said.

    With the foundation in place, the rest of the work was completed in a single day, Feb. 16, between 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. “We had to make adjustments,” said Hokamp, who took wood shop in high school. “Some of the pieces in the foundation were uneven, off a little. It was like a trapezoid.”

    “A slight rhombus, really,” Stiles added.

    The arboretum has posted a sign limiting the number of children crossing the bridge at one time to three. Donatti knows better: “This thing is built to hold six adults, each weighing 200 pounds. It’s solid.”

    undefinedPatrick Kurp, Engineering Communications

  • Tuesday, March 26, 2013 1:29 PM | Anonymous

    HISD students get firsthand experience with careers in STEM

    How much spaghetti does it take to hold one big marshmallow?

    One may not ever think of such a thing. Who puts marshmallows on pasta? But dozens of Houston eighth- and ninth-graders know the answer, thanks to students at Rice University.

    Houston Independent School District students got up close and personal with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts at Rice Empower’s STEM Expo March 7-8. Rice Empower is a student service organization that promotes science literacy, civic science and exploration of STEM careers.

    STEM students

    Students from M.C. Williams Middle School work on an experiment in Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.

    Approximately 150 youngsters participated in sessions ranging from demonstrations of Newton’s laws of physics and Rice’s own robotic technology to small-scale engineering and chemistry activities. The students also had the opportunity to tour the Rice campus and interact with Rice students and faculty members to learn more about STEM careers and college life.

    “For years, there’s been a national lack of interest in STEM fields,” said Trent Navran, a McMurtry College sophomore and Rice Empower president. “Even though jobs that demand scientific expertise are steadily growing, there are fewer students pursuing careers in these fields. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to help students understand what it might be like to work in one of these fields.”

    Students from M.C. Williams Middle School listened intently as Martel College junior Matthew Johnson, part of the STEM Expo coordinating team, explained one of the day’s activities. “The Marshmallow Challenge” required students to build a structure that could support the weight of a large marshmallow using only spaghetti, tape and string. At the end of the challenge, the structures were measured and the tallest structure was named the winner.

    Amit Suneja ’12, the students’ teacher, said that the STEM Expo did a great job of “fascinating” his students with STEM subjects.

    “One of the key issues across the U.S. is that students are just not interested in math and science,” he said. “Many of them view these subjects as a jumble of numbers and concepts that don’t apply to them. The STEM Expo has helped my students engage and become interested in these different topics.”

    J’Da Pickard, one of Suneja’s students, called Rice Empower “a great program.”

    “I’ve had a lot of fun today,” she said. “We got to do a lot of different experiments and learn new things.”

    “We’re really excited to have had such a great group of kids on campus,” said Valerie Bolaños, a Martel College senior and the STEM Expo coordinator. “We have been planning for this for months now, and it has finally become a reality. It would never have happened without the support of the amazing coordinating team, advisers, faculty members, Dr. Carolyn Nichol [director of Rice's School Science and Technology Program], Lisa Blinn [associate director of Rice's Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering] and Schlumberger [event sponsor]. We’re really grateful for all of their time and help with this and we hope we can make this an annual event.”

    Rice Empower was founded in 2010 by Kareem Ayoub ’12 and Thierry Rignol ’12 to promote science literacy and the exploration of STEM subjects. The organization partners with K-12 institutions, Rice academic departments and Houston community members to give students a real-world taste of STEM careers.

    “The group was initially created in response to the growing divide between science and the public in society,” Ayoub said. “As Rice students, we wanted to do our part to inspire youth and work with the public in a novel way to close this gap.”

    STEM studentsAfter seeing the positive impact and response from the Houston community, Ayoub and Rignol made the decision to expand Rice Empower to form World STEM Works (WSW), an international network of universities that have adopted the Rice Empower model to inspire interest in STEM fields. WSW currently has chapters at Rice, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Johns Hopkins University, the National University of Singapore, University of Bombay, University of Hyderabad, University of Oxford and the University of Texas at Austin.

    “WSW’s mission is to do our part, however big or small, in accomplishing three global tasks: inspiring our underserved youth to pursue STEM fields, closing the gap between science and the public and working at the interface of science and policy to develop leaders in STEM who carry dual rules as civic scientists,” Ayoub said. “We have received enormous support and positive feedback from the universities we have expanded to around the world and are excited to continue our work.”

    “We are looking forward to adding new chapters to the Empower family, and hope to reach our goal of 30 chapters by the end of 2013,” Rignol said.

    Both Ayoub and Rignol said that the STEM expo is the realization of a lot of work on the part of Rice Empower and WSW, and hope the organizations’ efforts will not only inspire youth to pursue STEM, but empower them to lead and change STEM.

    “We need future students who want to change the way the world is and build its infrastructure through the sciences and interactions with other fields,” Ayoub said. “The STEM expo conceivably envelops K-12 students in the scientific world of Rice, a top university with an environment to inspire. Furthermore, this event challenges these students to take on leadership roles in continuing this type of outreach in their own communities.”

    Sponsorship of the event was provided by Schlumberger.

    For more information, visit http://rice.worldstemworks.org or http://worldstemworks.org.

  • Monday, March 25, 2013 12:24 PM | Anonymous

    Their time has arrived

    Will Rice College may have been the big winner at Saturday’s Beer Bike, taking all three races, but Team Timekeepers were also victorious, proving their radio-frequency-identification-based timing system. Paul Melvin, Blake Miller, Ryan Koehn and Shaun Haby developed the system as their senior capstone engineering design project.

    Rice video producer Brandon Martin saw the Timekeepers in action as they gave their work a real-world workout March 23.

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  • Tuesday, March 19, 2013 9:24 AM | Anonymous

    No time like the present

    Engineering students bring Beer Bike timing system into the 21st century

    Tradition will meet technology for the first time at this year’s Beer Bike, Rice’s unique competition among residential colleges, graduate students and alumni in which teams of cyclists race and teams of chuggers drink water or beer, depending on their age and preference, in alternating rounds.

    Team Timekeepers

    Team Timekeepers -- from left, Paul Melvin, Blake Miller, Ryan Koehn and Shaun Haby -- have built a timing system for Beer Bike that uses helmet-mounted RFID tags to time races with .3-second accuracy.

    The March 23 event west of Rice Stadium will for the first time have an electronic timekeeping system, courtesy of a hardworking team of seniors who took on the challenge as their engineering capstone project.

    Most capstones are due to be completed by next month’s Engineering Design Showcase and Poster Session, but Paul Melvin, Blake Miller, Ryan Koehn and Shaun Haby – collectively known as the Timekeepers undefined chose to attack a problem with a tighter deadline.

    “But we get to see the results,” Melvin said while his teammates set up the rig for testing at the West Lot track last week. “It’s awesome because I get to tell other Rice students what I’m doing for senior design, and every single one says, ‘Wow, that’s really cool.’”

    For all of Beer Bike’s 55-year history, volunteer judges holding stopwatches, clipboards, pencils and flags have determined the winners. “They have a lot of things they’re trying to manage and there’s not a whole lot of training for judges, so ones who haven’t already done it for several years may or may not really know what they’re doing,” Melvin said.

    Mounting hardware

    Ryan Koehn attaches an RFID antenna to cables that will be suspended over the finish line at Beer Bike. The antennas pick up signals from the bikers' helmet-mounted tags when they come within range.

    The students’ system is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology commonly used in race timing. “We had a lot of different ideas,” he said. “We considered GPS, a video camera at the finish line or some sort of directional sensor. We considered something as simple as having more judges with stopwatches, which obviously isn’t very much of a design solution.

    “We thought from the get-go that it would be RFID, because it’s the same technology used in most marathons. It’s established for timing races, it’s highly accurate and it’s also within our scope of abilities – and our budget,” Melvin said.

    The tags are simple circuits printed on stickers that will go on riders’ helmets. The passive tags will be encoded and matched with riders in the timer’s computer; the tags will be read by 10 square RFID antennas suspended on steel cables over the finish line. The team calculated that times would be accurate to within .3 seconds.

    Using off-the-shelf electronics in no way simplified the challenges the team faced. They still had to design the physical system and software. The suspension system for the antennas “was a significant portion,” Melvin said. “That was completely done by Shaun, our mechanical engineer, who had to calculate all the forces, all the tensions on the wire rope, figure out how wide and how thick each beam needed to be, what we could weld, what we could bolt, how it could be assembled. That was a major undertaking.”

    Blake Miller

    Blake Miller at the timekeeper's table. Miller took charge of the system's computer interface.

    The students constructed the modular steel structure from raw 20-foot beams, cutting and welding at Ryon Lab and doing finish work at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. Four water-filled 50-gallon drums anchor each side of the structure, which will be padded for safety by race time. Miller, he said, led the graphic user interface software design.

    This year the RFID system will work in tandem with human judges, said Julie Neisler, assistant director for programs of the student center and liaison to Team Timekeepers. “This year we’ll do both and compare to see how close it is, really to see if the timing system works – and if so, how much human error there is, which I think will be interesting,” she said. “If it goes well, we’ll still have judges next year but they won’t have to keep track of times.”

    She noted the team has high-profile backers who covered the cost of the system, among them Harris County Judge Ed Emmett ’71, the Rice Engineering Alumni association and the John P. Schroeter (’74) Memorial Graduate Alumni Gift Fund. Gary Woods, a professor in the practice of computer technology and electrical and computer engineering, is the team’s faculty adviser.

    Emmett takes some credit for the idea. “Last year, I was one of the starters for the Beer Bike race and watched the race from the tower,” he said. “At that time I asked if there wasn’t a way to use RFID chips to keep track of the riders. Even though I never rode or drank for my college, I value the tradition of the race and wanted to help move it to the next level.”

    If things go well this year, the RFID system may take sole timing responsibility in 2014, Neisler said.

    “Our project is to design something that can be used for years to come,” Melvin said. “We expect this to be good to go for, hopefully, 20 to 30-plus years.”

    There is room for enhancement, he noted. Proposals to build a Web interface to provide real-time updates online and an onsite leaderboard are still up for grabs by future capstone teams.

    “Then you can see on the Web, in real time, ‘Hey, McMurtry has got its ninth rider on lap two right now, and they’re in the lead, but Jones is 10 seconds behind.’ That would be awesome,” he said.

  • Monday, March 18, 2013 10:11 AM | Anonymous

    Congratulations to Ann Saterbak, Professor in the Practice of Bioengineering and their Director of Laboratory Instruction for winning the Theo C. Pilkington Outstanding Educator Award from the Biomedical Division of the American Society of Engineering Educators. The award is given for “significant contributions to biomedical engineering education.” You can see a video about Ann’s work at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRndefiGaVE&list=PL0373A23703CA92AA&index=2.

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