School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
July/August 2014

Student inventors win big

Two teams of student inventors are poised to improve patients’ lives, earning a combined $70,000 in recent competition awards. Khushi Baby, an undergraduate team formed in Mechanical Engineering 491: Appropriate Technology in the Developing World, invented a silicone bracelet that contains a near-field communication chip like those used in Yale ID cards. The inexpensive smartphone-scannable bracelet records an infant’s vaccination history, enabling clinicians to see which vaccines the infant needs. As well, vaccine suppliers can aggregate records to forecast a clinic’s supply shipments. The other team, consisting of two SEAS doctoral candidates and a School of Management MBA candidate, invented a disposable electronic device called FluidScreen that can detect bacteria in liquids like blood or water in less than 30 minutes. With the press of a button, the cashew-sized device pumps the liquid into an integrated microfluidic system that separates any present bacteria from the liquid, sending the scan results to a smartphone. Users can know which bacteria caused an infection or if a water source is safe to drink. Both teams are using their winnings to develop their inventions for large-scale use.

Crowdsourcing a better robotic hand

Raymond Ma is rethinking robotic hand design. “We’re moving away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach and can now create custom solutions,” says Ma ’13MPhil, a doctoral candidate in the lab of Aaron Dollar, the John J. Lee Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Through his OpenHand Project, Ma shares his 3D-printable robotic hand designs online for free and invites contributions from the open-source user community—an “unprecedented” approach that builds on the increasing use of 3D printers to quickly prototype and validate designs. Ma’s designs, featuring simple fingers that conform to object surfaces without sensors, make it easy for researchers to “customize their own robotic hand, then print the parts in their own lab. We’ve gone to great lengths to make our designs easily modifiable and accessible, while still being affordable, durable, and capable of more than basic grasping and pinching. As other research institutions join in, we hope they’ll suggest changes that can improve the designs at a much faster pace.”