Several wins the Senior Project Awards!

Congratulations to the following senior design teams who won awards at this year’s Winter Design Review. Peter Burke advised 4 of the top 6 teams!

Dean’s Choice Awards

– PhotonFlight: Fiber Optic Drone Students: Nate Johnson, Nick Brega, Mervin Nguyen, Julius Yang, Desmond Bolia Advisor: Prof. Peter Burke Built a tethered drone that replaces RF communication with a single-strand fiber-optic link to enable secure, interference-free transmission of real-time video and telemetry, integrating onboard AI for human detection and autonomous tracking in hazardous environments.

– EMG-Controlled Prosthetic Hand Students: Antonio Velasco, Nicholas Ward, Alessandria Vega, Vy Huynh Advisor: Prof. Hung Cao Build a low-cost, non-invasive prosthetic hand uses wrist-mounted EMG signals and an embedded convolutional neural network to classify gestures in real time (>90% accuracy, ~39 ms latency), translating muscle activity into controlled finger motion via a 3D-printed, servo-actuated mechanism.

– Wireless Drone Charging Students: Joey Chang, Ruiyuan Ke, Isaac Meyer, Savannah Nguy, Theresa Wang Advisor: Prof. Peter Burke Built an autonomous charging platform uses high-frequency resonant inductive coupling and a MOSFET-based inverter to wirelessly transfer power to a drone, converting it through rectification and regulated buck conversion to safely charge a 2S LiPo battery while incorporating MCU-based control and protection logic.

Industry Advisory Board Awards

– 3D Mapping and Modeling Drone System Students: Haoling Wang, Ryan Zhang, Shang-pin Chen, Xin Gao Advisor: Prof. Peter Burke Built a drone-based 3D mapping platform that integrates LiDAR sensing, onboard NVIDIA Jetson computing, and ROS 2 software to generate detailed spatial models for applications such as infrastructure inspection, construction monitoring, and disaster response.

– AuraBot: An Edge AI Desk Wellness Companion Students: Jianming Zheng, Sijia Zhang, Yixuan Jing, Manqing Chen, Shunquan Wang Advisor: Prof. Zhou Li Built an interactive desktop wellness companion that combines multimodal sensing, expressive robotics, and conversational edge AI to monitor sedentary behavior and encourage healthier daily routines in office and study environments.

-Passive Analog Beamforming Drone Monitor Students: Kaivan Huo, Kevin Sunzeri, Francine De Borja, Janine delos Santos, Elizabeth Nguyen Advisor: Prof. Peter Burke Designed a low-cost hybrid analog–digital beamforming antenna system that significantly extends Bluetooth and WiFi detection range while enabling simultaneous directional monitoring of signals using passive RF networks and microcontroller-based processing.

Congratulations to several!