STUDENT NEWS
Accomplishments, both stunning and silly, by the alumni of tomorrow.
PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD: TRUEPANI
2ND PLACE: WOBBLE The current method for assessing athletes following a concussion is to observe as they stand on one leg. After all, balance is one of the main functions affected by concussions, and the students behind Team Wobble set out to invent a more accurate way to measure this important biomarker. The Wobble was created by Hailey Brown in mechanical engineering, Matthew Devlin in biomedical engineering, Ana Gomez del Campo in biomedical engineering, and Garrett Wallace in biomedical engineering. Their automated device—which resembles a large,
high-tech bathroom scale—moves slowly back and forth while sensors measure a person’s center of balance as they stand on it. By diagnosing one of concussion’s biggest side effects, Wobble could help to reduce the risk of brain damage and keep athletes safer. Concussions can have serious consequences, especially when they go undiagnosed. The students behind Wobble reported that high school athletes are three times more likely than professional athletes to suffer from catastrophic brain injury as a result. Wobble won second place in the InVenture Prize competition, scoring $10,000, a free U.S. patent filing and a spot in Flashpoint.
FINALIST: FRET WIZARD Teaching yourself to play the guitar can be difficult. There are tutorial videos on YouTube, but they don’t show the frets of the guitar up close. Guitar tabs, which are like sheet music, have all the information, but look like a confusing mess of lines and numbers to a novice. But Fret Wizard deciphers guitar tabs and shows you where to put your fingers. Fret Wizard is an artificial intelligence
!
022
learning program that studies guitar tabs and then displays the finger positions in an intuitive interface. Fret Wizard was the brainchild of Ali Abid, a computer science student, and Molly Ricks, who studies international affairs.
In India, a child dies every 60 seconds from water-borne illnesses. While traveling through rural India, Tech students Samantha Becker and Shannon Evanchec found that the root of this problem was not the water itself, but rather contaminated drinking vessels. Much of rural India does not have running water, so residents must collect water and store it in their homes. Becker and Evanchec discovered that household cups are often contaminated with dangerous levels of microbes such as E. coli. They formed the TruePani team with Sarah Lynn Bowen and Naomi Ergun to come up with a two-part solution to stop disease: a drinking cup coated with a thin layer of antimicrobial copper, as well as a copper-coated, metal lotus flower, which can be submerged in the water storage container to fight the microbes. TruePani won the popular vote from InVenture Prize audience members, giving the all-female, multidisciplinary team the People’s Choice Award and $5,000.
the BASELINE
raised by Georgia Tech For The Kids’ annual Dance Marathon $152,125.17 Money fundraiser benefitting Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE VOLUME 92 NO.2 20 16
of different tree species that 130 Number can be found on Tech’s campus