ASU projects, research featured at Innovation Showcase

One ASU team of engineering seniors are designing strategies and technologies and testing their ideas to help Salt River Project (SRP) eradicate the Quagga mussel, an invasive species that presents a challenge to waterways throughout the United States. Another team is assessing the impact solar hot water heaters have on power consumption for the company.

Students and faculty members throughout the College of Technology and Innovation (CTI) are working on research and instructional projects like these and many others that improve the environment, develop new product concepts, and solve problems for CTI’s partners.

All will be on display from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., May 4, at the first Innovation Showcase, hosted by the college at ASU’s Polytechnic campus.

“Our students and faculty work together across disciplines to create, design and develop innovative solutions to real problems – that includes engineering, engineering technology, science and entrepreneurship classes,” said Mitzi Montoya, university vice provost and dean of the college. “This year we are inviting many from the community to see what students and faculty are working on. We hope the Showcase sparks ideas for others and leads to future collaborations.”

More than 40 projects will feature the work of students during the past year as well as research that has spanned several decades. Some of the instructional student projects and research are sponsored by companies like ADM, Honeywell, ON Semiconductor, Sandia National Lab, Godaddy, Paypal and SRP.

The Quagga mussel and solar hot water heater projects are a result of the recent SRP commitment of $500,000 over five years to support educational activities in four colleges at ASU, including CTI, the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and the College of Public Programs.

“We have the capacity to go from concept generation to functional prototypes, and with any project sponsored by a company, their employees engage in project oversight and provide ‘real life’ elements of science, engineering and/or business,” said Chell Roberts, executive dean in CTI and chair of the Department of Engineering. 

The Innovation Showcase also will include projects and research, featuring alternative energies like algal feedstock for biofuels; computing solutions to create audio algorithms; technological solutions for social entrepreneurship efforts in Africa, such as a bicycle charger for charging cell phones and a pasteurization process for citrus; aeronautical technology that could be used for security purposes; medical technologies for human monitoring; and much more.

For information or to attend, visit http://technology.asu.edu/rsvp.