Senior Design Ends Year with Skills, Solutions and Winners

As Senior Design – the year-long capstone course for the Textile Engineering and Textile Technology degree programs – came to a close this week, it brought new skill sets for students, problems solved for project sponsors and a slate of winners who were recognized for their design creativity and technical merit.

In their fall semester, Senior Design student teams are presented with a relevant industrial or research problem that necessitates the need for them to leverage prior classwork to create a solution.  These open-ended problems, defined by sponsors, challenge the students to think outside of standard educational classroom learning environment to prepare them for the workplace environment.  Students gain experience in defining criteria based on sponsor needs, concept ideation, prototyping and evaluation.

Every April, the teams present their projects for judging during a Senior Design Day at Talley Student Center. This year’s winners were:

Technical Merit in Design:
1. Porticool cooling vest 2.0 (Porticos)  – Best in Show Winner
Peiheng Feng
Jordan Lohn
Emily McGuinness
Emily Price

2. Canine biometric undershirt (Army Research Office)
Kelly Bates
Kate Mestelle
James Schaefer

3. Causes and solutions to torque in apparel (Gildan)
Rachel Foote
Ciara Oden

Creativity in Design:
1. Wader/submersion fabric durability optimization (Patagonia)
Trey Everhart
Chelsea Lloyd
Jesse Noble
Chris West

2. Reflective garment design and analysis (Hanesbrands Inc.)
Marvin Graser
Kaitlyn Kramer
Symone Woods

3. Energy harvesting shade unit (Saab Baracuda)
Jamie Barbuto
Brian Iezzi
Casey Kivett

For more information on Senior Design and how to sponsor a project, contact Dr. Jesse Jur or Dr. Russell Gorga.