Successfully pitching inventive projects

Six Capstone Design teams win $10,000 each at annual Esch competition By Carol Truemner Faculty of Engineering Impressing judges with projects ranging from a unique alternative to traditional cancer treatment to a high-performance e-bike that folds into the size of a backpack netted six senior-year engineering teams $10,000 each. The winning teams, narrowed down from 10 in the pitching competition, took three minutes each to explain their innovations to a panel of judges in the annual Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design  event held online March 31. For the past eight months, students have been working on their Capstone Design projects both remotely and on campus when pandemic-related restrictions were eased. One of those projects, Petalos, earned $10,000 in the pitch competition along with $3,000 as the winner of the Sedra People's Choice Award. Team Petalos -  biomedical engineering students Ethan Chung, Jeffrey Feng, Evandros Kaklamanos, Joey Kuang and Timothy Seto - is developing a new gastrointestinal endoscope after a couple of team members who worked in surgical units discovered it can be one of the most contaminated medical devices. The students' design includes a removable and disposable insertion tube and channels and an autoclavable body to improve the device's cleaning process and reduce contamination for better clinical outcomes. "While maintaining full functionality, Petalos removes the most tedious, time-consuming and error-prone reprocessing steps and achieves the gold standard of sterilization through autoclaving," the team said.