Industry Solutions

More than 250 students tackled 55 projects during the 56th year of the Clinic Program. Thanks to companies like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, who received Milestone Awards for the 30 projects each have sponsored, students had a diverse range of problems to solve. Here we share the details of several of the projects, many of them interdisciplinary, presented during Projects Day, May 7.

Find more project descriptions at hmc.edu/clinic

MIT Lincoln Laboratory Clinic

COMPUTER SCIENCE CLINIC

RACECAR for Education

MIT Lincoln Laboratory liaison: Andrew Fishberg ’16; Advisor: Zachary Dodds; Students: Parth Desai PZ ’19, Chloe Elliott SCR ’19, Alasdair Johnson PZ ’19, Anthony Seto ’19, Reagan Smith ’19

In collaboration with Beaver Works outreach program, MIT Lincoln Laboratory developed an autonomous RC car with powerful sensors and processing. Using two RACECAR robots, the Clinic team researched and developed a curriculum in which students implement a variety of robot navigation algorithms. HMC first-year students used these cars to test and refine the materials, resulting in a curriculum that will make the RACECAR platform more accessible. MIT hired the students to continue work on the curriculum during the summer.

HRL Laboratories Clinic

COMPUTER SCIENCE/PHYSICS CLINIC

Machine Learning and Quantum Dots

HRL Laboratories LLC liaisons: Seán Meenehan ’08, Emily Pritchett; Advisor: Peter Saeta; Students: Corbin Bethurem CMC ’19, Evan Hubinger ’19, John Jeang ’19, Vivian Phun ’19

In order to use electrostatically defined quantum dots to build qubits for quantum computers, HRL Laboratories seeks a three-dot system with a configuration of one electron per dot. Since this process of tuning up the dots manually is laborintensive, the team sought to automate the process via a machine learning technique, namely deep reinforcement learning.

Niagara Bottling Clinic

ENGINEERING/MATHEMATICS CLINIC

Stretch Wrapper

Niagara Bottling LLC liaison: Parker LaMascus; Advisor: Timothy Tsai; Students: Stephanie Blankley ’20, Bohan Gao ’19, Tai Le POM ’19, Adrian Sanchez Arias ’19, Dana ShangGuan ’20, Elijah Whitsett ’19

The team developed an algorithm that autonomously optimizes stretch wrapper material usage under quality constraints. The algorithm, compatible with Niagara’s main data and control hub, does this by safely experimenting with different machine parameters and finds recipes that either meet or surpass the goal of 20 percent material usage reduction.

Arvind Ltd. Clinic

GLOBAL CLINIC

Textile Drying

Arvind Ltd. liaisons: Harvinder Rathee, Dhruvin Savalia; Advisors: Sunil Kale (Ahmedabad University), Erik Spjut; Students: Nisha Maheshwari ’19, Alex Ravnik ’19, Sitoë Thiam ’19; AU Team: Varshil Dalal ’19, Anuj Pandya ’19, Het Patel ’19

Arvind Ltd. is an Indian textile manufacturing company with $1 billion revenue seeking to increase the energy efficiency of its textile drying process. The team modeled and prototyped novel, low-energy ways to dry fabric at an industrial level and recommended changes to the current process that will help Arvind recover 10 percent of the energy usually lost during drying.

EDR Clinic

MATHEMATICS CLINIC

Historical Imagery Project

EDR liaisons: Zachary Fisk, Paul R. Schiffer, Richard White Advisor: Nicholas Pippenger; Students: Nathaniel Diamant ’19, Mackenzie Kong-Sivert ’19, Jacky Lee ’19, Vivaswat Ojha ’19, Kinjal Shah ’19

Team members developed systems to search and categorize vast collections of historical raster imagery and extract key information. The complex problems relate to search, statistical analysis, image analysis and mapping. EDR believes that a focused mathematical and computer science approach provides both a challenging problem for students and a potentially valuable product for EDR, ultimately helping to improve environmental due diligence across the United States

Social Justice Clinics

Students interested in seeing the impact of their work on society prompted the addition of three specialized Clinic projects, partially funded by a Carnegie Corporation educational leadership grant.

Local Factory Startup: Claremont Pomona Locally Grown Power

A world-class solar panel factory was designed by seniors Nate Smith, Giulia Castleberg, Christopher McElroy, Priscilla Chu, Jacquelyn Aguilera (Pitzer) and their advisor Kash Gokli, professor of manufacturing practice and engineering Clinic director. The students made their own solar panel and toured solar panel manufacturing plants to study machines and materials. They performed a financial analysis, sourced material suppliers and designed a replicable factory floor layout. The state of California approved $2.1 million in budget funding to construct the facility which may provide 6,000 photovoltaic systems for low-to-moderateincome households.

Fresno Air Quality Monitoring and Mapping: Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce

The Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce is partnering with local organizations to clean the air in downtown, Chinatown and southwest Fresno. To help them monitor the results, Kaitlyn Loop ’19, Sidney Cozier ’20, Eliana Goehring ’19, Simone Griffith ’19 and Jakim Johnson ’19, with the guidance of chemistry professor Lelia Hawkins and environmental design professor Tanja Srebotnjak, implemented low-cost sensors to visualize the fine particulate pollutant concentration.

Automating an Engine to Extract Educational Priorities for Workforce City Innovation: PilotCity

To support a Clinic-type program for high school students in Alameda County schools, the Clinic team developed software and algorithms to automate PilotCity programming. Selasi Adedze ’19, Aanya Alwani ’19, Madison Hobbs SCR ’19, Evan Liang ’20 and Dominique Macias ’19, guided by liaison Derick Lee and team advisors Hixon Center Director Tanja Srebotnjak and math professor Talithia Williams, used topic modeling to extract educational priorities from community college and high school syllabi and inform work-based learning partnerships.