Team Effort

Nathaniel Mensah ’24 (left) and Ezinne Anozie ’22 demonstrate Nouri-Me, a device that makes infant bottle-feeding easier during a recent prototype exhibition for ENGS 21: “Introduction to Engineering.” Nouri-Me was designed by Mensah, Anozie, Evana Amok ’23, and Elorm Coch ’22 working with teaching assistant Nina Klee ’23 to address challenges with existing products. “As we read online reviews, we noticed common complaints: [It] wasn’t secure, did not stay in place on the body, and the bottle could not stay in an acceptable feeding position for some parents,” says Amok. “We took these complaints to the drawing board…and looked at images of organic shapes to find something that would be comfortable for both the baby and an adult.” 

The exhibition traditionally caps the “Introduction to Engineering” course and teams with innovative prototypes that demonstrate best overall performance earn the Phillip R. Jackson Award. Fall term winners—Emma Kallman ’22, Mia Giallorenzi ’23, Emily Lukas ’23, and Ella Marden ’23, with teaching assistant Gretchen Carpenter ’23—developed Core Check, safety device that checks ropes for internal damage. Users slide a rope through the device to watch for any catching, stopping, or skipping that might indicate rope damage. “Team Core Check created many prototypes, finally settling on a simple but elegant prototype that consistently detects internal damage in climbing ropes,” says Professor Vicki May. “They came up with a creative way to assess the accuracy of their device and solicited and incorporated user feedback throughout the term.”

EDITED High Entropy Alloys & Materials, a journal recently launched by Springer to cover all properties of high-entropy materials, is led by Professor Ian Baker as co-editor-in-chief.

FUNDED The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Innovare 2021 Trusted AI Challenge Series has awarded Professor Eugene Santos $100,000 to demonstrate how beneficial a human-AI team can be when expectations align.

QUOTED Professor Colin Meyer and postdoc researcher Jacob Buffo spoke to Planetary Radio, a podcast of the Planetary Society, about their discovery of the makeup of the plumes from Saturn’s moon Enceladus and what it means for finding life beyond Earth.

SELECTED PhD student Congran “Billy” Jin Th’21 was one of two U.S. finalists—the other was from the Geisel School of Medicine—in the international Matariki Three Minute Thesis competition with an entry that centers around using the human body’s natural processes to harvest energy.

PUBLISHED Research toward a better battery by engineers Chuanlong Wang, Yiwen Zhang, Jianmin Luo, Xiaofei Hu, Edward Matios, and Weiyang (Fiona) Li appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

IDENTIFIED Research engineers Barbara Currier and the late John Currier ’79 Th’81 and Professor Douglas Van Citters ’99 Th’03 Th’06 identified primary determinants of artificial knee wear in research recently published in The Bone & Joint Journal.

NAMED The Breast Cancer Locator device developed by CairnSurgical—cofounded by Professors Keith Paulsen and Venkat Krishnaswamy—has been named the N.H. Tech Alliance 2021 Product of the Year.

LISTED Professor Tillman Gerngross has been named to the N.H. Business Review’s “New Hampshire 200” list of influential business leaders across major industries in the state.

This article appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of the Dartmouth Engineer magazine.