Vanderbilt engineering seniors will demonstrate their readiness to tackle real-world engineering problems by showcasing their capstone design projects during the annual School of Engineering Design Day on Monday, April 20 from 5-7 p.m. in Featheringill Hall.
A biomedical engineering team designed an augmented reality surgical training system with haptic gloves that allows surgical trainees to practice delicate soft-tissue manipulation while providing fingertip force feedback and real-time tracking. For Nissan, mechanical engineering teams tackled redesigning the Rogue center console and integrating a rear-seat phone mount.
Seniors work on teams throughout the year on solutions they create for a wide range of challenging engineering problems for industrial, academic and government clients. Some 57 design projects were selected by seniors in biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical and computer engineering, engineering management, and mechanical engineering. Many of the projects required cross-disciplinary cooperation to include students from different engineering fields.
Some other design projects include:
- a recycled glass bottles as an aggregate material in concrete,
- integrated electrical and embedded systems design for a NASA simulated lander challenge,
- an IEEE 2026 SoutheastCon competition robot for this annual contest,
- data acquisition system for a high-performance SAE racecar,
- portable assault bridge for 5th Special Forces Group vehicle crossing,
- a medical device to assist senior adults with balance and gait limitations,
- and a haptics alarm system to reduce alarm fatigue for critical care staff.
Design courses provide students with the experience of working on projects that involve teamwork, design constraints, budgets, reviews and deadlines.
“Design Day has always been a celebration of all the lessons learned over four years of our seniors’ engineering educations,” said Associate Dean for Experiential Learning Tom Withrow. “They experience a year that creates a challenging environment for collaborative design. They will remember the adaptability, hard work and resilience to keep going through challenges.”
A real value of senior design projects is the mentorship and support by external advisors—industry representatives, government clients, entrepreneurs, nonprofit mentors, as well as research and clinical faculty, Withrow said.
This year Houston-based MetroNational is a sponsor of the school’s capstone design program. “Through this partnership, MetroNational has not only invested in the next generation of engineers but also demonstrated its commitment to advancing the field and strengthening the engineering community,” Withrow said.