Engineering seniors build devices to control airplanes, explore Mars and shoot hoops

April 28, 2023

Engineering seniors build devices to control airplanes, explore Mars and shoot hoops

What: College of Engineering Craig M. Berge Design Day
When: Monday, May 1, 1-5 p.m.
Where: Student Union Memorial Center Grand Ballroom and University of Arizona Mall

TUCSON, Ariz. – University of Arizona engineering seniors have spent the last year collaborating on capstone design projects for industry and university sponsors. On May 1, the 99 student teams will present their projects and compete for $47,000 in prizes at Craig M. Berge Design Day.

"Craig M. Berge Design Day is a story of remarkable student success and the ways engineers improve lives," said David W. Hahn, the Craig M. Berge Dean of the college. "Not only are the designs a testament to our students' technical agility and creativity, but the projects also show why the college's graduates are highly sought after in industry and government."

The student projects are as varied as they are impressive, including efforts to advance space exploration, improve quality of life for people with kidney disease and make agriculture more sustainable.

Design Day is open to the public beginning at 1 p.m. on May 1. The awards ceremony – in which students receive cash prizes from award sponsors, including a $7,500 grand prize – is from 4 to 5 p.m.

Many student teams are available for interviews at Design Day, including groups working on:

A basketball-shooting robot to inspire interest in STEM among youth
An autonomous mechanical spider for gathering agricultural data
An airplane control system that can be used by pilots without arms, such as Jessica Cox, a UArizona alumna who is the first armless licensed pilot in history and will also be at Design Day
A 250-pound combat robot to compete on the "BattleBots" TV show
A robotic system to explore Martian lava tubes
An orbiting deployable telescope to detect near-Earth asteroids, sponsored by NASA

A full list of projects is available on the College of Engineering website.

Design Day is the culminating event of the Craig M. Berge Design Program, which engages undergraduate students in hands-on design projects throughout their undergraduate careers. The Berge family funded the program in honor of Craig, a College of Engineering alumnus who died in 2017.

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Media contact:
Katy Smith
College of Engineering
Office: 520-621-1992 | Cell: 520-271-3780
katysmith@arizona.edu

The University of Arizona, a land-grant university with two independently accredited medical schools, is one of the nation's top 50 public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report. Established in 1885, the university is widely recognized as a student-centric university and has been designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. The university ranked in the top 20 in 2021 in research expenditures among all public universities, according to the National Science Foundation, and is a leading Research 1 institution with $770 million in annual research expenditures. The university advances the frontiers of interdisciplinary scholarship and entrepreneurial partnerships as a member of the Association of American Universities, the 66 leading public and private research universities in the U.S. It benefits the state with an estimated economic impact of $4.1 billion annually.

The University of Arizona Land Acknowledgement