In science, speed is just distance divided by time. But in sports, where fractions of a second can determine champions, speed is everything. That’s why many athletes look to engineering for a high-tech edge that can maximize velocity and performance.

Take Nike’s new track and field uniforms — released just in time for the summer Olympics.

Billed as Nike’s fastest collection yet designed, the ultra-lightweight Pro TurboSpeed suit reflects over 1,000 hours of wind-tunnel testing and insights from some of the world’s swiftest runners. Strategically placed raised patterns and holes reduce aerodynamic drag much like a golf ball’s dimples help propel it farther and faster. AeroSwift technology keeps the suit’s interior surface as smooth and uninterrupted as possible, eliminating distractions. And the garment’s smooth, flat waistband and external elastics do away with bulkiness and chafing.

The company says its new suit, which is made from 82 percent recycled polyester fabric, shaves up to .023 seconds off the time of a 100-meter dash than its previous track uniform.

Runners aren’t the only athletes taking advantage of high-performance fabrics. An Australian company has developed a compression suit for horses that improves circulation and helps speed recovery from competition, exercise, or travel. Made of fast drying, warp-knit stretch fabrics, the durable suit has antibacterial and stain-resistant properties. The suit’s designer, Matthew Spice, expects several of Australia’s equine athletes will sport his colorful coverups at the London Olympics.

When snow melts in the Alps, European ski and snowboard fanatics may soon be heading to Skipark 360, 45 minutes from Stockholm, a year-round indoor winter sports arena with everything from downhill skiing to ice hockey and international slalom competitions.

Dominated by a covered 150-foot-wide reinforced concrete slope rising nearly 600 feet, it will manufacture its own snow yet rely on renewable energy. At least, that’s the plan developed by Berg | C. F. Moller Architects with help from Sweco, an engineering firm specializing in sustainability. The $300 million project still needs investors, says Jan-Erik Mattsson, head of the architecture firm’s Stockholm office. But if it succeeds, co-inventors Glenn Bovin and Per Hammarstrom could market their concept elsewhere. Istanbul and Las Vegas are interested.

Gabrielle Palermo, Susanna Young, and Clay Tyler assembling a G3Box. Photo Courtesy Arizona State University

Ever dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur? If so, you’re in good company – over half of U.S. millennials (ages 18 to 34) say they want to start a business or already have done so, according to a recent survey from the Kaufmann Foundation. Even more exciting is the fact that nowadays, starting a business does not necessitate leaving school, as more and more universities are striving to accommodate entrepreneurial students.

In this new eGFI blog series, we bring you four inspiring stories of undergraduate engineering students who have successfully patented their original ideas, teamed up with classmates and professors to launch businesses, and navigated the startup world, all while keeping up with their coursework.

So step aside, Bill Gates – the days of dropout turned entrepreneur may be numbered.

Delivering Hope: Gabrielle Palermo and G3Box

Undergraduate courses need not focus explicitly on entrepreneurship to ignite student interest — and foster schoolwide collaboration. Consider Engineering Projects in Community Service, or EPICS, a service-learning program that originated in 1995 at Purdue and now has outposts on 20 U.S. campuses and more than 30 high schools. (EPICS High was featured in a December 2010 Prism article.)

At Arizona State University, which began offering the program in 2009, a series of three courses guide student teams through the steps of creating and deploying original engineering projects to help local or international communities and nonprofits. That’s how biomedical engineering major Gabrielle Palermo came to join forces with Susanna Young, a first-year grad student in mechanical engineering. They teamed up after discovering they’d been working independently on the same EPICS project: refurbishing empty shipping containers for use in disaster relief and as mobile medical clinics in developing countries.

The professional aspects proved as engaging as the technical challenges. “Being part of a team, learning how to present… how to network,” says Palermo. “You’re just learning all these skills that you wouldn’t get in a regular engineering class.” With teammates John Walters, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, and Clay Tyler, who is pursuing a master’s in the same field, Palermo and Young pooled their resources and applied for funding through the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative, a program that provides $200,000 annually to ASU student business ventures. Their idea, called the G3Box (the three G’s stand for “Generating Global Good”), won $10,000 in seed money. The team was thrilled. “It was like, yeah, people really like the idea,” Palermo recalls. “You can get kind of far with this!”

G3Box was born from a need to bring safe, modern, and sustainable medical care to underdeveloped countries, especially those suffering from high maternal death rates. Many hospitals and international aid organizations lack the space and resources to expand their services, the ASU team discovered. That’s where G3Box’s key innovation comes in. Ports worldwide have a surplus of large empty shipping boxes that are prohibitively expensive to send back. By outfitting these spaces with medical equipment, potable water, and solar panels, the team is repurposing waste while providing accessible medical care for those in need.

The G3Box team describes the venture as a “more than profit organization” on its Facebook page. Indeed, the business is a model of social entrepreneurship: For every six boxes sold for disaster relief, G3Box can donate a maternity clinic to the developing world, where 99 percent of all maternal deaths occur. Palermo and her team have been hustling to finish their first maternity-clinic prototype for shipment to Kenya, where the maternal death rate is 50 times that of the United States. “Its main goal is to save as many lives as possible,” she says.

The team’s passion and hard work continue to pay off. Recently they were named “College Entrepreneurs of the Year 2011” by Entrepreneur magazine. In the future, G3Box plans to provide medical training to recipients and also may explore other uses for the shipping crates, such as mobile classrooms or libraries. Although Palermo and her teammates, like many young entrepreneurs, did not expect to start a business in college, she claims that G3Box developed naturally out of their shared interest in improving the world. “We all have the same values: trying to help people. I think all of us went into engineering for that reason,” she reflects. “It’s just interesting that we took that, spun it a bit, and now we’re trying to run a business.”

Jessica Ashmead and Annicka Carter are behind OptiGuide, a new medical device for lighting incisions during surgery

Ever dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur? If so, you’re in good company – over half of U.S. millennials (ages 18 to 34) say they want to start a business or already have done so, according to a recent survey from the Kaufmann Foundation. Even more exciting is the fact that nowadays, starting a business does not necessitate leaving school, as more and more universities are striving to accommodate entrepreneurial students.

In this new eGFI blog series, we bring you four inspiring stories of undergraduate engineering students who have successfully patented their original ideas, teamed up with classmates and professors to launch businesses, and navigated the startup world, all while keeping up with their coursework.

So step aside, Bill Gates – the days of dropout turned entrepreneur may be numbered.

Everything Illuminated: Jessica Ashmead and Annicka Carter

An appropriately named INVENT! class gave University of Utah bioengineering majors Jessica Ashmead and Annicka Carter, both 20, the idea of starting a business. This novel approach to an introductory engineering course was designed in 2009 by Patrick Kiser, an associate professor of bioengineering. Students attend twice-a-week lectures on bioengineering fundamentals, while on Fridays they hear from a variety of innovators on topics ranging from acquiring patents to applying for grants. At the end of the course, students can opt to devise a theoretical solution to a current problem in the field instead of taking a final exam. Ashmead and Carter, friends and roommates, grabbed the first option — then took their project several steps further.

Their invention is based on “an idea that’s fairly simple but extremely important,” says Carter. It’s a lighted surgical retractor. The instrument, widely used in surgery to hold incisions open, has several lighted versions on the market today. But most need A/C power cords, which often get in the way during surgery and can be difficult to sterilize. Many retractors are thus designed to be disposable. Ashmead and Carter’s battery-powered retractor uses built-in LEDs as a light source. The OptiGuide, as they named their design, is reusable — all parts are easy to sterilize — and offers surgeons a portable, sustainable, and efficient way to light surgical cavities.

Here’s a brief video presentation Ashmead and Carter made about their design:

Beyond creating a fully functioning prototype, Ashmead and Carter found patenting their idea to be one of their main challenges. “Being able to come up with exactly what your patent will claim is really difficult when there are so many [pre-existing] patents on little parts of your idea,” Carter says. Fortunately, the INVENT! class and the university’s Technology Commercialization Office provided connections to legal experts. The pair credit their bioengineering instructor turned adviser, Holly Holman, with being a mentor throughout the process.

To raise funds to develop their idea, the OptiGuide team members, like many young innovators, turned to student competitions with cash prizes. Utah’s INVENT! course encourages participation in such contests and feeds into a statewide invention contest called techTITANS that Ashmead and Carter entered as part of the class. Though they didn’t win, the experience motivated them to “enter as many competitions as we could,” says Carter. They went on to win honorable mention and $5,000 in the national Collegiate Inventors Competition, sponsored by Kauffman, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the Abbott Fund, a nonprofit arm of the global healthcare company. Although Ashmead and Carter both are full-time students with part-time jobs, they insist OptiGuide has become their true passion. “We love it,” says Ashmead. “If we could choose to do anything when we get home from work and school, we would prefer to work on [OptiGuide],” agrees Carter. “If we could, we’d spend all of our time on this.”

Crunchy as it appears, the structure above is no chocolate wafer resting atop a dandelion. It is metallic micro-lattice, newly christened the world’s lightest material. Created for DARPA by HRL Laboratories in collaboration with researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, this material is so light that it can balance on dandelion fluff without crushing it. However, don’t be deceived by its size or weight, as materials can actually get stronger when shrunk to nanoscale.

The micro-lattice’s shape is in part inspired by the strong, lightweight architecture of structures like the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. The lattice is made by passing ultraviolet light through a photomask which constructs the frame of the lattice from a photo-sensitive polymer. Using this method, the tubes are created with a diameter of only 100 to 500 micrometers. The lattice is then coated with nickel using a technique called electroless plating. After the lattice is coated with the nickel, the polymer is dissolved leaving only hollow tubes of nickel about 100 times thinner than a human hair. The final result is a metallic structure that is 100 times lighter than Styrofoam and, amazingly, 99.99% air by volume.

Watch as the lattice is compressed and regains its shape in this slow-motion video:

Why does this all matter? At the moment, researchers are speculating that metallic micro-lattice could be used as shock absorbers, increasing your safety in a car and anywhere else you might need to be cushioned from harm. After the lattice is crushed, it decompresses and regains up to 98% of its original shape (see the video above for a demonstration). But that’s not all this super-light material can do: it could also potentially be used in battery electrodes, and its mostly-air composition makes it a great thermal insulator. Best of all, there will surely be many more, unforeseen applications for metallic micro-lattice to come – you just need to dream them up!

This has been a guest post by Sebastian Kazenbroot-Guppy, Dallas Leclerc, and Wayne Ho, students at the University of British Columbia

Image by Dan Little from HRL Laboratories, LLC – via Wikipedia

Eye-popping spectacles often require a lot of engineering to produce, as is evident in this latest viral video, entitled L.E.D. Surfer:

What you are seeing is pro snowboarder William Hughes taking to the slopes wearing a stunning snowsuit covered in LED lights. The video was produced for the fashion and culture blog Nowness, and was shot by photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton. Shooting conditions were less than ideal, with temperatures reaching below -13 degrees Fahrenheit. The LED suit, created by electrical engineer and designer John Spatcher, reportedly took over 300 hours to make!

Manu Sharma and his innovative wind turbine

Ever dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur? If so, you’re in good company – over half of U.S. millennials (ages 18 to 34) say they want to start a business or already have done so, according to a recent survey from the Kaufmann Foundation. Even more exciting is the fact that nowadays, starting a business does not necessitate leaving school, as more and more universities are striving to accommodate entrepreneurial students.

In this new eGFI blog series, we bring you four inspiring stories of undergraduate engineering students who have successfully patented their original ideas, teamed up with classmates and professors to launch businesses, and navigated the startup world, all while keeping up with their coursework.

So step aside, Bill Gates – the days of dropout turned entrepreneur may be numbered.

Suvival of the Cleverest: Manu Sharma and Nuovo Wind

Browsing in an antique store on vacation two years ago, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University senior Manu Sharma chanced upon a display of spiraling front-porch adornments known as wind twisters. Inspired, he thought: Why not make a wind turbine shaped like this? Sharma explained the idea to his honors-program professor, who encouraged him to seek university funding. That initial $1,000 grant spurred Sharma’s zest for entrepreneurship — and a start-up to develop and distribute his innovative power generator. Launched in early 2011, Nuovo Wind now has three classmates plus a faculty member on board, private investors, and a potential first customer: the Tanzanian government.

Manu Sharma’s trajectory from Embry-Riddle aerospace engineering major to postmodern wind-turbine designer – and head of a fledgling firm with $50,000 in venture capital – was anything but straightforward. It began with an entrepreneurial professor who encouraged him to develop his spark of an idea using a $1,000 school research grant.

A conceptual image of Sharma’s turbine (via Nuovo Wind)

To come up with a turbine that was both maximally efficient and inexpensive to make, Sharma employed a Darwin-like theory called evolutionary design optimization. The method involves generating a large number of potential designs on computer software and then using special algorithms to select the most “fit.” Using an open-source CAD program and developing his own evolutionary algorithms, Sharma ran through hundreds of designs, selecting the most efficient ones to “mate” — combine specific traits of two designs, like genetics — and produce even more fit “offspring.” He pursued his project fervently, doing most of his work outside of class and sometimes gathering advice from professors. “If I had free time between classes, I would grab a laptop and work on my code,” he says. Once he had perfected a small-scale model, Sharma applied for and won a second university research grant – for $7,500 – to fund a prototype.

Sharma’s wind-turbine design wasn’t the only thing that evolved. He also had to learn how to pitch his idea to potential investors and develop a sensible business plan. He gained this experience by “pretty much applying to all the clean-tech competitions I could find,” he says. Though he failed to win any, Sharma gained valuable experience presenting his invention to potential backers. More crucially, he learned that developing countries offered the best target market for his low-cost turbines, which can generate the same amount of electricity for one quarter the price of a traditional $10,000 wind turbine.

Here’s a video from Nuovo Wind that explains their turbine concept:

In early 2011, Sharma, now a fourth-year student, officially launched Nuovo Wind to make and distribute the turbines. Soon afterward, he was admitted to the prestigious Kairos Society, a nonprofit dedicated to providing the most talented young entrepreneurs with opportunities to network with global industry leaders. The experience further stoked Sharma’s passion for entrepreneurship, and his enthusiasm spread: Three classmates, also Embry-Riddle seniors, as well as his electrical and computer engineering professor, Brian Butka, signed on to the start-up. Now, in addition to private investors, the Tanzanian government has expressed interest in Nuovo Wind’s innovative turbines.

In many ways, Sharma followed the traditional, self-taught path many students have taken over the years. But now, thanks to the recent crop of entrepreneurship-focused curriculum options, more budding engineers are innovating inside as well as outside the classroom.

See our follow-up posts in this series for more stories of student innovators.

City driving is often a hassle, but recent developments in compact car design could make navigating urban gridlock significantly more tolerable. The next wave of electric vehicles will be sleek, energy-efficient, and small enough to make the Smart Car look like a gas-guzzling giant.

The Hiriko is a 100% electric vehicle that has the ability to fold itself up and squeeze into the tiniest parking spaces. Based on the City Car, a design developed a few years back at MIT (with the help of eGFI trailblazer Will Lark Jr.), the Hiriko has about a 60-mile range, four-wheel drive, and a nifty windshield that swings upward to allow passengers to enter and exit.

A pilot program with 20 Hiriko prototypes is scheduled to take place in the Basque region of Spain (“Hiriko” is Basque for “urban”), reports the New York Times. If the test run goes well, the Hiriko could be manufactured as early as next year, with a price point of about $16,400.

While tomorrow’s cars may be getting smaller, they are undoubtedly getting smarter as well. The EN-V, a two-wheel, pod-like vehicle designed by General Motors, incorporates autonomous driving technology, as well as the ability to broadcast vital information such as speed and location to other drivers (EN-V is short for Electric Networked Vehicle). Best of all, drivers will never have to wander aimlessly through parking lots again – the EN-V can be summoned to its owner at the touch of a smartphone.

Although the EN-V is still very much a concept car, GM does have plans to test similar vehicles in China’s futuristic Tianjin Eco-City, which is still under construction. In the mean time, you can watch some EN-Vs drive around to a techno soundtrack in this video:

Images courtesy of:
Hiriko
Flickr/segwaysocial2

After over 50 years of humanity sending things into orbit, outer space is starting to look a bit cluttered. While Russia is reportedly investing over $2 billion to fix the problem, now the Swiss are also poised to join the space cleanup crew. The Swiss Federal Institute for Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) has announced plans to create a $10.8 million satellite called CleanSpace One for the purpose of picking up space debris.

So why the urgent need for spring cleaning? Currently NASA is tracking over 16,000 objects larger than 10cm (about 4 inches) in diameter orbiting the Earth, all of which are potential hazards for both manned and unmanned spacecrafts. In 2009, for instance, pieces of an older Russian satellite collided with and destroyed the U.S. satellite Iridium, which cost $55 million to make. Compounding the space junk issue is the fact that collisions such as these often result in the creation of thousands more pieces of debris.

CleanSpace One is designed to tackle three main functions: tracking an orbiting object, capturing it, and “de-orbiting” it back into the Earth’s atmosphere, where both satellites will burn upon re-entry. Although CleanSpace One will be a single Kamikaze-style mission, EPFL eventually hopes to release families of similar janitorial satellites to efficiently clean up Earth’s orbits. Launch could take place in as little as 3-5 years, EPFL claims – remarkably sooner than the Russian cleanup plan, which is set to take place in 2023.

Watch the EPFL team explain the space junk problem and their clever solution:

Images: EPFL