Engineering students win Tech Hub student project grants

Each year TechHub, the official technology store of The Ohio State University, holds a Student Project Grants Pitch Night. Last November, two projects led by engineering students were among the three winners that split $10,000 in funding.

Mechanical engineering students Corey Marcus and Holden Ruegger, and electrical and computer engineering student Alec Wilson won as a team, while computer science and engineering student Henok WeldeMicael went solo to capture a top spot. Winners are determined by votes from Pitch Night attendees, who are encouraged to ask the presenters questions.

Marcus and his teammates pitched their rocket launch simulator concept, which is logical since they are all members of the Rocket Team student organization. They told the audience they wanted to help Ohio State become the first university to send a rocket into space, and that a launch simulator is a critical first step. The simulator currently stands 10 feet tall in Bolz Hall and uses compressed air to propel 5 kilograms to 50 meters, but the students have much bigger plans. Using Arduino's open source electronics platform and pipes donated by Pipe Valves, Inc., the team plans to eventually test hardware which will send a rocket to space.

“By the end of spring semester, we’d like to shoot a tennis ball through the simulator and see how well we can monitor it,” said Marcus.

After working at NASA as a research intern, WeldeMicael also is inspired by space, but his project went in a different direction. His new smartphone app is revolutionizing the way that culture, computer vision and design work together. He had the idea of a visual translator, a tool much like Google Translate, but one with more complex, non-Latin languages. Because he is originally from Eritrea, the app includes his native alphabet of Ge’ez and currently is able to translate simple sentences. With the TechHub funding, he is confident that he can scale the app to tackle more complex translations and additional non-Latin alphabets.

The idea came naturally to WeldeMicael, who has studied abroad in India and participated on the Ethiopian and Eritrean Student Organization's dance team. He has taken full advantage of the diverse opportunities at Ohio State through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI). He knew he wanted to be an engineer and ODI’s Bridge program helped him discover a passion for computer science. After taking CSE 3901, a class that allows for experimentation, WeldeMicael was driven to understand how computers process visual information. Throw in his knack for design, his user interface expertise and his personal experiences, and a new app was born.

by engineering student Alisa Noll (photos from techhub.osu.edu)