Spring 2025 Design Expo

On Thursday, April 17, students from the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering showed off their creative, innovative, and collaborative problem-solving at the 21^st Design Expo. Held for the first time at the Peterson Event Center, the expo featured 93 amazing design projects from across five departments and highlighted cornerstone projects from ENGR-0717: Foundation of Engineering Design students.

Teams of two to eight students were mentored by Pitt faculty and local industries, and their projects were judged by Pitt alumni and faculty as well as by industry volunteers. Attendees also voted on their favorite project, which earned the People’s Choice Award.

“Each year, the Swanson School’s many industry partners generously pose real-world problems for the Design Expo,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Seeing how our students work together to solve these challenges, for me, is an endless source of inspiration. This spring, the new venue has only added to the event’s success. We are grateful to the judges, our partners, and the attendees for their support of our students and engineering at Pitt.” 

Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Winners below:

Best Overall Project
Vision-Language-Action Model for a Generalist Robotic Manipulator 
Benjamin Carnovale, Samarth Chopra, Alexander McMoil, and Evan Sokolson

People’s Choice Award
Standardizing Starline’s Warehouse Pickings
Maggie Altschaffl, Bikai Fang, Sarai Morato, Xindi Shao, and Matt Tarone

DEPARTMENT AWARDS  

Bioengineering 

1^st Place Improving Bag Value Masks in Emergency Medicine  
Kelly Isola, Connor LaMarca, Ben McCutcheon, Rebecca Miller, Brock Pemberton, Madison Smith, and Erica Taylor 
  
2^nd Place Adjustable Pediatric AFO with Locking Flexion Hinge for Diplegic Cerebral Palsy  
Aritra Ghatak, Semira Kizhakkey, Kshitija Koli, Andrea Moore, Francine Sanoy, and Danielle Yakubisin 
  
3^rd Place Still Grip: Ergonomic Surgical Grip  
Michael Christofidis, Maya Franklin, Ryan Ging, Tarnini Ravikumar, Suyash Sinkar, Peter Wood, and Eileen Zhang  

Civil and Environmental Engineering 

1^st Place Bullock-Pens Park Project 
Erica Beigi, Madelynn Bennett, Brandyn D’Amico, Connor Kane, Paige Mancia, and Nick Rocco

2^nd Place BNY Mellon Center Retrofit 
Trey Blystone, Michael Constantine, Ashley Lucente, Michael Makowski Jr, Daneil Schaub, William Schmidt, and Grace Walker

3^rd Place Sylvan Ave Slope Stabilization Project 
Liam McLaughlin, Fernanda Morales-Viveros, Chris Moran, Cora Nevel, and Daniel Parks

Electrical and Computer Engineering

1^st Place Vision-Language-Action Model for a Generalist Robotic Manipulator
Benjamin Carnovale, Samarth Chopra, Alexander McMoil, and Evan Sokolson

2^nd Place Satellite Tracking Directional Antenna Array (STARR-LOC)
Kaye Baron, Thomas Eckrich, Aidan Gresko, and Adam Nichols

3^rd Place (tie) 
Cheap High-Performance Advanced Storm Equipment (CHASE) 
Rohan Ari, Noah French, Ruizhe Gao, Natan Herzog, and Beryl Sin 

CAVEMAN – Cave Autonomous Vehicle for Exploration, Mapping, and Navigation 
Benjamin Esquieres, Tyler Hansen, Kushal Parekh, Pavel Serhiayenka, and David Zhang

Industrial Engineering

1^st Place Lunar Intelligence and Reconnaissance Initiative (LIRI) 
Connor Cosgrove, Katherine Gonzalez, Felicity Thatcher, Andrea Toader, and Brian Trieu

2^nd Place Standardizing Starline’s Warehouse Pickings 
Maggie Altschaffl, Bikai Fang, Sarai Morato, Xindi Shao, and Matt Tarone

3^rd Place NurturePA: Streamlining Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder (PMAD) Assessment 
Hannah Bradfield, Xiangyy Cheng, Jordan Henry, Xinkai Li, and Roan McCall

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

1^st Place Vibration Durability of Printed Electronics for UAVs 
Ezra Dugosh, David Engler, Adam Gosden, Nathan Hoffeditz, Minh Nguyen, and Brittany Sadej

2^nd Place (tie) 
Multimodal UAV Detection  
Dmitri Asay, Matthew Houston, Jayden Provance, and Alex Schehadi 

Acoustic Noise Reduction for Urban Homeless Populations  
Rebekah Burns, Ben Fidler, Elizabeth Fillman, Maia Gulley, Brendan Lang, Hannah Muschinski, and Steven Panico

Development of Thermal Management Solutions for AI Datacenters Using High Thermal Conductivity Materials – B  
Lauren Beck, Ryan Carroll, Emma Murphy, Ganesh Selvakumar, Taorui Su, and Ruiqi Wang

Product Realization

1^st Place Wearable Fall Injury Protection via Expandable Foam 
Shane Conlin, Eric Eversbusch, and Kenechukwu Nnake

2^nd Place Alternate (Renewable) Energy Sourcing at Commercial Scale  
Arjun Bains, Bhargav Gadiparthi, John Nelligan, and Brigit O’Bannon

3^rd Place “Smart” Medicine Dispenser  
Jeremy Fresh, Cindy Lkhagvasuren, Jessica Wong, and Danielle Yakubisin