Spring 2024 Design Day: 15 Spartan Engineering teams honored

The April 19, 2024 Spring Design Day at the MSU College of Engineering honored students with multiple awards. Team Fraunhofer USA Team (Left to right): Ruiqi Lu, Joey Lopez, Herminee Orzech, Andrei Bodea, Morgan Gates, and Scott Risdon

The Michigan State University College of Engineering celebrated the 30th anniversary of its premier undergraduate event on Friday, April 19, 2024.

Called Design Day, it features competitions and project presentations from a variety of engineering classes. It gives students the opportunity to apply the knowledge and experiences they have gained during their engineering education.

The event, held at the end of every fall and spring semester, includes Capstone Projects completed by teams of seniors during a 15-week capstone course and presented on Design Day.

Teams put their best efforts forward to solve real-world problems for the college’s industry and corporate partners, and a panel of corporate judges presents awards to the most impactful, presentable, innovative, sustainable, well-designed and technically challenging projects.

The Spring 2024 Design Day held in the Engineering Building, included nearly 1,000 Spartan Engineering students representing 10 degree programs, 14 courses, and 207 teams. Among this group were 625 senior students involved in 126 capstone teams. Fifteen awards were presented at the Spring 2024 Design Day.

A look at the honorees:

Nearly 1,000 MSU College of Engineering students participated in the Spring 2024 Design Day on campus.

Applied Engineering Sciences

Mike Sadler Competitive Edge Award
For team that strives to achieve highest possible outcome to attain next level of success.

Team Munters FoodTech
Project: Product Packaging Design Optimization
Team members: Jade Candela, Michael Harper, Hana Duncan, Kyle Lee, Kaylin Nguyen, Isaac Richardson

Most Impactful Award

Team Perrigo
Project: Machine Vision Test Unit
Team members: Cameron Cowland, Chance Wilczynski

Most Sustainable Award

Team Kautex Textron
Project: Identifying a Circular Economy for Plastic Composites
Team members: Jack Deak, Natalia Pittendrigh, Yashi Kumar, Shreya Peddi, Kaitlin Ifkovits, Charles Eppink

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Rolla C. Carpenter Senior Design Award
Presented to best team as judged by MSU College of Engineering faculty members and a panel of practicing engineers.

Team Spartan Associates
Project: Consumers Energy New Lansing Operations Center
Team members: Colin Edwards, Dana LeFevre, Andrew Carter, Olivia Hagan, Laura Hershauer, Sarah George, Ryan Soto

Team Munters FoodTech, recipients of the Mike Sadler Award, with Karen Sadler (far right). Karen is the mother of Mike Sadler, a former MSU football player who died in 2016.

Computer Science

Auto-Owners Insurance Exposition Award
Presented to team with best overall design.

Team TechSmith
Project: Enhanced Video Assistant
Team members: Albert Cho, Kyle Nowak, Sriram Seelamneni, Emmett Barrett, Carter Salna, Chirag Rudrangi

MSU Federal Credit Union Praxis Award
Presented to team with most technically challenging software system.

Team MillerKnoll
Project: Product Lifecycle Tracing System
Team members: Ashley Jarria, David Xiong, Keshav Babu, Felix Liang, Mohammad Zaman

TechSmith Screencast Award
Presented to the team with video that best describes and demonstrates a software product.

Team General Motors
Project: Recovery of Lost and Stolen IT Assets
Team members: Auden Garrard, Hunter Jones, Joel Marshall, Jemin Han, Seth Youngstrom

Amazon Sigma Award
Presented to team that demonstrates best overall Capstone experience.

Team Vectra AI
Project: Hybrid Cyberattack Simulator
Team members: Nathan Motzny, Henry Barton, Alisha Brenholt, Campbell Robertson, Andrew Talbott

Wayne Dyksen, Design Day executive director and professor of computer science and engineering, has been coordinating the premier academic event for several years.

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Place Awards

Team MSU College of Music
Project: Feel the Music
Team members: Jason Ahn, Spenser Lafferty, Maria Scannell, Jason Shell, Andrew Morgan

Team MSU D-Cypher Lab
Project: Design of Hardware-in-the-Loop Fire Simulator
Team members: Alayna Schumaker, Nick Fedewa, Najiha Jaigirdar, Doriana Vuljaj

Second Place Awards

Team Fraunhofer USA
Project: The Design and Fabrication of an Inkjet Printer for Selective Diamond Growth
Team members: Scott Risdon, Andrei Bodea, Herminee Orzech, Morgan Gates, Joey Lopez, Ruiqi Lu

Team MSU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project: 24W DC-DC Converter
Team members: Ben Torok, Jake Cabana, Ben Schuchardt, Manan Patel, Douglas Bombard

College of Engineering Dean Leo Kempel considers Design Day a culmination of senior students' academic journey.

Mechanical Engineering

Presentation Award
Presented to team with best presentation.

Team Pratt Miller
Project: FSAE Front Outboard Electric Motor Assembly
Team members: Cameron Hesano, Rafael Abage, Matthew Ajlouny, Anissa Sant, Ronak Patel

Edison Undergraduate Design Award
Presented to team with best technical design.

MSU Combat Robotics Team
Project: Combat Robotics Vehicle Design and Development
Team members: Owen Korff, Ryan Prost, Nicole Gibbons, Ellie Clark (also sponsor), Ari Bozann, Ahmed Abboushi

da Vinci Award
Presented to team with best machine design.

Team 13, Station B
Project: Cornhole Bag Launching Mechanism
Team members: Jack Darrow, Connor Mackenzie, Luke Naughton, Kaden Swierkos, Kieran Velasquez

Written by Eric Lacy, lacyeric@msu.edu. See more at the Engineering Media and Public Relations page.