Other schools have Homecoming celebrations, Harvey Mudd College has Projects Day and Presentation Days—a time when corporate and community-based clients, parents, alumni, guests and the Mudd community cheer for HMC students and their scholarly endeavors. But when events are over, more than fond memories remain. HMC’s showcase of student research also results in patents, pioneering concepts and career-launching ideas.

There were more than 100 research talks plus 35 Clinics this year. By this time next year, noted Daniel Goroff, outgoing vice president and dean of the faculty, the total number of Clinic projects will have reached 1,200, with over 300 sponsors. The numbers are impressive but they are overshadowed by the scope of student work.

Challenging & Controversial
A Physics/Engineering Clinic project sponsored by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory gave students a particularly challenging task, one aimed at improving the enforcement of nuclear non-proliferation treaties. The ability to distinguish between uranium 235, which is normal fuel, and plutonium, which can be used to create nuclear weapons, allows scientists and government officials to monitor how nuclear materials are used in facilities around the world. The students reported that the amount of uranium and plutonium inside a reactor can be determined by analyzing the emission of anti-neutrinos (low-mass, high-energy particles) from radioactive fuel rods. Devices used to detect anti-neutrinos are sensitive to stray muons (high-energy cosmic ray particles) which can mimic the effects of anti-neutrinos.

Team members Max Pflueger ’07, Matthew Williams ’07, Greg Nielsen ’07, Victor Wang ’07, Anthony Hutain ’08, Michael Crockett ’08 and Zach Lupei ’08 designed, constructed, and tested a new muon veto system that cancels out the detection of stray muons. The team conducted simulations to verify and extend the experimental data, and designed and implemented a framing system to hold muon veto paddles around the anti-neutrino detector. Project adviser Richard Haskell, Physics Clinic director, said the students’ sleek prototype represented “great quality work.” Their project attracted the attention of local media and the interest of alumnus Robert Kelley ’67, a senior inspector at the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an organization that works to ensure that nuclear energy is used safely and for peaceful purposes.

The controversial topic of bioethics and embryology was debated by two teams of students from Biology 82, taught by biology professors Mary Williams and Robert Drewell. The teams faced off on the ethical, societal and legal implications that arise from technological advances in human reproduction and had a lively debate about the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research.

Earth Work
Several projects dealt with environmental issues. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory enlisted students for the Engineering Clinic project “Modeling the solar photovoltaic industry.” Victor Camacho ’07 and Kevin Bergemann ’07 discussed global warming as part of the Science and Citizenship class taught by Paul Steinberg, assistant professor of political science and environmental policy. Another project from that class about water scarcity was presented by Autumn Petros-Good ’09. Seniors Whitney Buchanan and Ben Tribelhorn studied “Water, Los Angeles and Harvey Mudd College” for their Readings in Physics class advised by professors Theresa Lynn and Richard Haskell. Buchanan and Tribelhorn investigated where the campus’ water comes from and how gets to Claremont, where the water is allocated on campus and annual costs and usage.

The reason for their study, Buchanan said, was to present the best conservation methods “so that any efforts would use the least amount of water and save the most money.”

Tribelhorn and Buchanan noted that both Sontag Residence Hall and Hoch-Shanahan Dining Commons (both LEED-certified “green” buildings) were particularly efficient. Their statistics showed the student residences have the second highest percentage of water use on campus. Thus, said Tribelhorn, “Students will play a vital role in conservation in the future.” In addition to encouraging students to use water responsibly, Tribelhorn and Buchanan recommended that the college install more water meters to better monitor water usage.

Mike Barber, grounds services manager, who attended the students’ presentation was enthusiastic about their work. He has worked with past student teams that have suggested improvements to HMC’s landscape practices, including a 2000–01 Engineering Clinic team that recommended implementing drought-tolerant landscaping and installing a water station. Both recommendations have been adopted and continue to save the college water and money.

Community-based projects Introduction to Engineering Design (E 4) students dedicated their time to devising items for on- and off-campus clients. Chemistry professor David Vosburg sought an efficient way to cut gel-coated glass and plastic. The Etc. Players, a student drama club, and humanities and social sciences Professor Jeff Groves charged E 4 students with devising better props for annual performances.

Stephen Hamilton, principal of the Danbury School, a special education school in Claremont that serves children with severe orthopedic and medical problems, asked students to create a device to stabilize the hand or elbow of cerebral palsy (CP) impaired students. For these students, activities that require fine muscle movements (e.g. writing or painting) are particularly difficult and often require an instructor to help physically stabilize their hand or elbow. E 4 students Raffi Attarian ’09, Jennifer Osgood ’10, Austin Lee ’10 and Nicolas Hasegawa ’10 visited a Danbury classroom, talked with students, observed their interactions and came up with a stainless steel, device that attaches to a wheelchair and extends with arm movement.

Another Danbury project was undertaken by Nick Herman ’07 under the supervision of President Maria Klawe, computer science, Debra Mashek, humanities and social sciences, and Darryl Yong ’96, mathematics. Herman demonstrated the Brainfingers device (a headband-like device worn on a user’s forehead), which controls a computer by reading surface electrical signals generated from muscle, eye movement and brainwave activity. Herman studied how using Brainfingers with mathematical software could improve the spatial and motor abilities of elementary school students. He will continue work on the project this summer.

Crowd Pleasers
Engineering Clinic team members Ryan Ellis ’07, Diana Hawkins ’08, Rebecca Kelcher ’07, Scott Mahr ’07, Brandon Smith ’07 and Rosemary Todd ’08 spent time at a local lake testing their project for first-time Clinic sponsor Electro Yak, LLC. Company owner Dick Brass asked the team to design and construct an electric kayak that could extend the range for regular kayakers, assist those who prefer not to paddle and give resorts a safer option for their guests. The students wanted to retain the properties and feel of a traditional kayak while providing a safe and intuitive product that is easy and fun to use. Their design, which features a motor that folds up into the hull, is currently going through the patent process.

A crowd-pleaser during the Clinic poster session was the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE)/Los Alamos National Laboratory Clinic team project, which attendees tested. Faith Dang ’07, Joe Ishikura ’07, Pyry Matikainen ’07, Michael Tauraso ’08 and Steve Wyckoff ’07 devised a 3-D interactive museum exhibit that included game-like simulations. Their Drift Game demonstrated the basics of how drift tubes, protons and electric fields interact. Users were able to accelerate protons in much the same way a real linear accelerator does. In the team’s Scatter Game, users could construct a crystal, fire neutrons at it and view the scattering pattern. The students’ interactive software will be installed at the Bradbury Museum in Los Alamos in June 2007 and will be the central component of the museum’s exhibit on the LANSCE facility.

Teamwork
The Global Clinic Projects sponsored by Amgen and Hewlett-Packard (see page 12) allowed HMC students to experience a different campus and culture. Other projects offered collaboration with other campuses as well. Projects with master’s students from Keck Graduate Institute included the biology research project “Optimization of a testing method for genetically modified traits in maize,” and the KGI/Engineering Clinic Project “Evaluation of pre-filled plastic syringes as the primary container for therapeutic proteins.” Engineering students in David Harris’ E 158 class collaborated with students from the University of Adelaide to design a 32-bit MIPS microprocessor.

This cooperative teamwork seen across the world and between campuses is just the type of collaboration from which HMC students can most benefit, remarked Goroff, who gave a lunchtime presentation to community leaders during Projects Day. In his remarks about “Innovation, Global Competition and the Scientific Workforce: Beyond the Numbers,” Goroff said that the United States still has the comparative advantage with its scientific workforce because the U.S. higher education system teaches more than what is on the syllabus. “We instill social capital (the ability to work together and for the common good), which I know is not happening in the rest of the world because of the millions of people applying for spots in Indian and Chinese universities. They can’t do things on the scale that we do here and with the attention that we give.”

When photographs were taken of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-116) in December 2006, a collective cheer resounded among Mudders.

The space-based photo shoot was a culmination of an Engineering Clinic project sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation in 2003–04. Students designed camera circuit boards on the picosats (miniature satellites) that were deployed to take the space photos late last year. Students were challenged to provide imaging capabilities for the four-by-four-by-five-inch picosats while taking environmental tolerances (temperature and radiation) and power consumption into consideration.Each satellite launched from the Shuttle Discovery weighted just over a kilogram and carried cameras and a propulsion system. The mission explored the feasibility of using picosats to inspect spacecraft and assess them for damage or anomalies.

Despite never having designed such a circuit board before, the team delivered the project on time and under budget. Team members were Andrew Cole ’04, Nathan Mitchell ’05, Brian Putnam ’04, Daniel Rinzler ’05, Philip Vegdahl ’04 and Gabriel Takacs ’05, who was awarded the 2004 Alford-Gilkeson Award as the outstanding junior student in the Department of Engineering. The faculty advisor was John Molinder, James Howard Kindelberger Professor of Engineering, and the liaison for The Aerospace Corporation was Samuel Osofsky ’85, associate director, Communications Electronics Department. Osofsky and Paul Anderson, senior engineering specialist, were on campus during Projects Day to publicize the Clinic team’s success.

“Nelson and I really enjoyed working with the students,” Osofsky said. “We told the students at the beginning of the year that if their project were successful, their design would fly in space. The resulting pictures are worth thousands of words.”

It was a reunion of sorts for Presentation Days lecturer Margaret Martonosi. She met up again with colleague Maria Klawe, former dean of Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where Martonosi is associate dean and professor of electrical engineering. Martonosi also visited with her sister, Susan, who is assistant professor of mathematics at HMC.

Martonosi’s research interests are in computer architecture and the hardware/ software interface, with particular focus on power-efficient systems and mobile computing. In the field of mobile computing and sensor networks, Martonosi leads the Princeton ZebraNet project, employing mobile ad-hoc networking for wildlife tracking. Her talk “Architecting Mobile Systems of the Future: Experiences from ZebraNet and Beyond” described this very interdisciplinary project, which mixes computing and biology to track zebras in Kenya. She related how there was a need to understand animal movements long-term, over long distances as well as the family relationships within the region’s sub-species of Burchell’s zebra and Grevy’s zebra, the latter of which is endangered. Scientists are also studying how to strategically purchase wildlife corridors and preservation areas so that the animals and farmers can coexist.

The collars designed by the ZebraNet team included a GPS radio, micro-controller, flash memory and solar power regulation in a flexible rubber collar designed with the zebra’s comfort and safety in mind. Biologists were able to track the amount of time the zebras spent in different categorizations of the landscape, helping to pinpoint patterns that could prove helpful in determining preservation areas.

“There are interesting things with wildlife tracking, but there are also interesting things with letting people use distributed computing more easily,” said Martonosi, who went on to describe The Sarana Project, which followed on the heels—or hoofs, if you prefer—of the ZebraNet research.

Sarana (which stands for “Spatially aware resource aware network architecture”) aims to provide a fluid, dynamic, abstract and optimizable systems layer for allowing efficient systems implementations on real-world, highly mobile platforms.

“This notion of distributed mobile computing is growing, starting from wildlife tracking and moving into many different applications,” said Martonosi. “We are thinking about how can we leverage the vast amount of little bits of computing, the little bits of infrastructure that are out there in the world with mild connectivity and do it in a way that takes advantage of the fact that we’re all walking around and experiencing interesting things and want to share them.”