BME Capstone Team Overcomes COVID Challenges

After months of working on their capstone projects, University of Arizona engineering seniors were faced with campus closure, shipping delays and other coronavirus-related restrictions. These challenges made it difficult, if not impossible, to complete their Craig M. Berge Engineering Design Program projects as planned. Nevertheless, in a testament to the resiliency and adaptability that comes with an engineering education, 85% of teams met their original objectives. Others, who couldn’t finish as planned, found success in different ways.

Because of shipping delays, students on Team 19024 didn’t quite complete their project, a capacitive volume sensing system for Roche Diagnostics, as scheduled. But the students pivoted swiftly to having virtual meetings with their sponsors and performing thorough testing from home. Their efforts won them two awards at Design Day: the Raytheon Missile Systems Award for Best Overall Design and the Rincon Research Award for Best Presentation.

“While the changes to the structure of the course in the end of the spring semester brought many challenges, I felt that as a team, we adjusted as well as could have been expected,” said BME team member Alana Gonzales, who is going on to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering at Duke University.

In place of presenting their projects at a traditional Design Day, students uploaded video project presentations . One sentiment was echoed over and over again, including by BME major Bridget Slomka:

“While all of these factors have been challenging, our team has pulled it together and grown to be better engineers.”