MANUFACTURING PA GRANTS ADVANCE FACULTY–INDUSTRY PROJECTS
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upported by Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development, the Manufacturing PA initiative is designed to spur new technologies and processes in the manufacturing sector by uniting graduate and undergraduate students and their faculty advisors with industry partners. In 2020, the following Villanova Engineering projects were awarded grants: Smart Brain Imager Dr. Meltem Izzetoglu, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and InfraScan, Inc., a medical technology manufacturer in Philadelphia, were awarded $42,484 for a smart brain imager. Current smart health devices can conveniently and efficiently monitor various physiological signals from the body such as heart rate, temperature and blood pressure. Although it is one of the most vital organs, monitoring of the brain both physiologically and functionally in everyday settings remains a challenge. This is partially because, until recently, existing neuromonitoring methods based on electrophysiology or magnetic resonance imaging would not allow wearable, battery operated, wireless designs that can be reliably deployed in real-life environments. This collaborative project aims to design, develop and manufacture a comfortable, durable and affordable platform, based upon functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology, that is miniaturized, fully wireless and app-operable, thereby accelerating the field of cognitive health monitoring. Wetting of Binder Solution on a Porous Bed of Microparticles Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Dr. Bo Li and Associate Professor Dr. Qianhong Wu, working with ExOne, a binder-jet 3D-printing technology company, were awarded $69,993 for improved binder-jetting technology. Binder-jetting technology is a disruptive method of 3D printing in which an industrial printhead deposits a liquid binder onto a thin layer of powdered particles, layer by layer, until an object is formed. While binder jetting has promise as a production technology, each powdered material has its own characteristics, and particles that have porous surfaces are more difficult to assemble via the binder-jet process than those with smooth surfaces. Through this project, Villanova Engineers are investigating how to best wet porous
INNOVATIVE ADVANCEMENTS particles with the binder and generate guidelines or parameters for this form of 3D printing. Developing optimal process settings for specific materials will result in significant cost savings (less printer time, less material wasted) and enable new products to reach the market faster. Manufacturing Process, Assembly and System-Yield Optimization for Microelectromechanical-Systems Devices Dr. Rosalind Wynne, associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Avo Photonics, Inc., a photonics-based technology company that manufactures optoelectronic solutions and products, were awarded $38,707 to optimize MEMS fabrication, assembly and packaging. The global market outlook for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)—micrometer-scale devices that integrate optical, electrical and mechanical elements—are predicted to grow from $48.74 billion in 2018 to $122.83 billion by 2026. This technology impacts smart consumer electronics including wearable devices like Apple watches, IoT Amazon Alexa towers and collision avoidance sensors in the automotive sector. Lack of standardized fabrication processes in these devices, however, leads to reduced product performance and life spans. This project will take advantage of the existing decade-long partnership Dr. Wynne has established with Avo Photonics President Dr. Joseph Dallas ’85 CLAS and CFO Kim Wheeler ’88 VSB. Successful process refinement will bolster Avo market share to support its anticipated 25% workforce expansion in the next few years, generating more Philadelphia jobs while preparing graduate students to join the PA manufacturing workforce. This research will be conducted in Dr. Wynne’s Laboratory for Lightwave Devices under the auspices of Villanova’s Center for Advanced Communications.
