BOB KERNS
ON THE BLUFF DREAM TEAMS
Sometimes the Answer Is in the Right Question Student Engineers Tackle Shoreline Trash RESPONDING TO THE needs of the world is more than a lofty goal, it’s a core tenet of University of Portland’s mission statement. And this past year, a group of seniors put that mission into practice when they had to completely reimagine their senior capstone project. The interdisciplinary team of two civil engineers (Olivia Helinski and Nick Kanno), two mechanical engineers (Ben Bishop and Courtney Cadiz), and two computer scientists (Alex Weininger and Samuel Nguyen) was first tasked with building a “marine debris capture device.” But things got fuzzy when they realized their original idea to create a tool that would skim debris from the shore of the Willamette was both redundant
10
PORTLAND
(there are dozens of devices on the market) as well as too ambitious for their timeframe. “Having something moving in the water with some sort of automation would be a huge undertaking for just us with only a year to work on it, especially with half the team being remote,” says Weininger. So, they started over completely from scratch. This time, though, they started not with an idea, but with a question: What does the world actually need? “They did months of research, interviews, and outreach with stakeholders along the Willamette River—industry, nonprofits, riverfront property owners,” says the team’s advisor, Shiley School of
Engineering professor Jordy Wolfand. The goal was to find out what problems, related to debris in the river, needed a solution. “Many people didn’t respond, but the nonprofits were very interested and excited to talk about this stuff,” says Wolfand. The team learned that volunteers who pick up litter along the shore are integral to a healthy river ecosystem, because collecting the debris before it hits the water is far more effective than trying to remove it once it’s in there. But volunteers say their biggest problem is the physical exhaustion of using typical litter-grabbers, or “stick-pickers,” as they’re usually called. Volunteers wanted something more ergonomic.
