Innovation is Underway at CEID with 2018 Summer Design Fellows

The sixth cohort of the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science's Summer Design Fellowship is underway and student teams are innovating away at the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID).

The nine students comprise four teams of two to three members, each working on a specific project. With access to resources that allow them to develop hardware and software solutions for a specific problem, the Summer Fellows choose a project that solves a specific problem and work to complete it by the end of the 8-week session.

Designed to assist "makers" at Yale, the fellowship is the only one of its kind at Yale, and has proven fruitful in its six years. Past CEID fellows have published papers, started companies, and and developed medical devices, sound cancellation systems and many other innovations. Here’s this year’s set of projects-in-progress:

Soil Drying - The team composing of Natalie Irwin and Seila De Leon aim to make a device that can dry a 5-gram soil sample in the field within one to two minutes. They’re making it for Yale's Ucross High Plains Stewardship Initiative as a way to simplify the reading of carbon levels in soil on agriculturally productive land.

DropLets - Team members Michelle Tong, Sinem Sinmaz, and Ting Gao have set out to develop a way to minimize and prevent global water waste, starting with the faucets in our own homes. Household sinks are a major source of wasted water, with many homes leaking more than 90 gallons per day. The team plans to create device to automate existing faucets to prevent leaks.

LitKit - The team of Alex Epstein and Dylan Young will spend the summer developing an apparatus converting optical microscopes into fluorescent microscopes. Currently, microscopes used in many high schools cannot be used for modern research techniques. Using basic light microscopy, users often see only dead cells. State-of-the-art fluorescent microscopy, however, allows users to see molecular machines moving in live cells.

AIB - The team of Lance Chantiles and Isaac Shelanski are working on a device that would serve as a navigation tool for museum visitors. The project grew out of Making Spaces, a course held at the CEID in 2017. In that course, students worked in partnership with the Smithsonian on possible uses for a temporary space at the Arts and Industries Building (AIB) on the National Mall.