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CETA Design Expo Features Student Inventions

December 16, 2022
Submitted By: Office of Marketing and Communication
Design Expo Entry

From handmade assistive robots to a water treatment system, to a miniature Mars Rover, versatile projects designed to benefit society took center stage at a recent expo at the University of Hartford.

UHart’s College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA) strives to provide students with project-based learning experiences and creates a bi-annual showcase through the CETA Design Expo. The college-wide event gives students a platform to present innovative projects that they work on throughout the semester. This year’s fall expo, held in early December, took place for the first time, inside the Hursey Center—a building that served as the perfect backdrop given its focus on state-of-the-art technology. Many industry professionals, faculty, staff, and student families (more than 50, in fact) came to support our first-year and senior visionaries.

The event began with a welcome speech from Hisham Alnajjar, CETA dean, acknowledging the students for their hard work this semester and thanking the attendees for coming. After, teams began presenting and demonstrating their designs.

Throughout the showcase, judges listened to presentations and evaluated the projects based on the following criteria:

Performance: Successful task completion.

Creativity: How creative is the final product?

Level of Difficulty: How complex is the product?

Experimental Verification: Was the product performance evaluated according to a set of criteria?

Presentation:

  • Poster: Is the project goal clearly illustrated?

  • Oral: Are students well-rehearsed/prepared?

After all the projects were evaluated, the judges gathered to deliberate over the top project ideas. “It was amazing to see the result of all the students’ hard work. I had a lot of fun getting to hear their explanations of what worked, what didn't, and how they worked to overcome each obstacle," says Jeremy Furusho ’23, expo judge, CETA Lead Team Ambassador, and mechanical engineering major with an acoustics concentration.

Seven winning teams were selected, with one overall winner:

Robotic Arm Block Identifying Device (R.A.B.I.D.)

  • Talal Alsmait ’26, computer engineering

  • John Sabovik ’26, computer engineering

  • Michael Robert ’26, mechanical engineering

Robert and Sabovik are thrilled to be among the winners, sharing, “We put hundreds of combined hours into our project and experimented with many advanced concepts, so being named the overall winners was incredibly gratifying and made for a fantastic experience that left us very eager for future projects.”

Robert went on to add, “Personally, this was the first experience I’ve ever had to show off my skills and create an engineering product that I was truly proud of, so I spent nearly every free minute I had designing and refining the robot.”

The additional winning teams are:

Robotic Arm

  • Lawson Correia ’26, electromechanical engineering technology

  • Josais Cruz ’26, electromechanical engineering technology

  • Jalen Jones’26, electromechanical engineering technology

Robot Ant

  • Daniel Aliberti ’26, computer and electrical engineering technology

  • Nia Avraamides’26, electromechanical engineering technology

  • Kiva Gordon’26, computer and electrical engineering technology

Mars Rover

  • Jacob Katz ’26, acoustical engineering and music

  • Nathan Schick ’26, biomedical engineering

  • Mina Silva ’26, mechanical engineering

  • Alyssa Valentin ’26, civil engineering 

Color Organization Crane

  • Nolan Kretschmer ’26, biomedical engineering

  • Nicolas Salinetti ’26, computer engineering

  • Gilad Solomon ’26, engineering TBD

  • Viken Torigian ’26, mechanical engineering

Hazard-Sensing Robot

  • Yousef Alshabbo ’26, electrical engineering

  • Chevane Nichols ’26, biomedical engineering

  • Justin Niziolek ’26, mechanical engineering

  • Kiden Scruton ’25, aerospace engineering

Honorable Mention: Parker Hannifin Multiple-Piece Valve Testing

  • Johan Alvarez ’23, mechanical engineering

  • Scott Stephenson ’23, mechanical engineering

  • Tyrise Thompson ’23, mechanical engineering

CETA would like to congratulate all the participating teams for their creativity, resourcefulness, and dedication to their projects. If you missed out on the fall expo, join CETA and the campus community at the Spring 2023 CETA Design Expo on Friday, April 28, 2023.