Letter from the Chair

Welcome to the Mechanical Engineering Senior Conference for the class of 2022!

With every Senior Conference we celebrate our students’ achievements in their capstone projects, and we cheer them on into their post-graduation lives, but, to use an overused adjective, this spring is special. After two years of Distance Learning and Learning from Anywhere, students and faculty together rejoice in having worked, innovated, and learned together, on campus, and in person. Though the pandemic is not yet totally behind us, things have begun to feel almost normal. Hoorah! Hoorah!

The projects this year display the breadth of current mechanical engineering practice. Of the 36 projects hosted within the department, at least 16 can be characterized as heavily electro-mechanical. Others encompass augmented reality, fabrication of medical devices, aeronautics, rocketry, physical chemistry, and cultivation of biological samples. Instrumentation, electronic measurement, and control of motors are part of most projects, whether or not primarily identified as electro-mechanical. Purely mechanical projects are now a distinct minority, though we welcome them when we find them, as they often pose difficult and interesting problems.

Beyond the 36 projects conducted in Mechanical Engineering, our students participate in interdisciplinary projects with colleagues in Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering. While teams have for years collaborated across departments, differences in schedules and deliverables have sometimes created duplication of effort and confusion in direction. In September 2021, the College of Engineering adopted a model in which each project is hosted by the department where the technical center of gravity lies, and all students engaged in the project, whatever their major, receive their instruction, follow the schedule, and meet the deliverables of the host department. Initial results are encouraging.

Projects come from many sources—faculty members seeking devices to support their research, Boston-area companies, student clubs, and individual student initiatives. We thank this year’s new sponsors as well as those who have contributed for many years. With such a large cohort that is growing each year, we are always in need of opportunities, and we invite anyone with a project idea to contact one of the faculty members named in this booklet.

I hope you will enjoy this year’s presentations and exhibits. I am extremely proud of what our students have accomplished! Please join me in saluting their perseverance and their achievements.