Engineering Students Partner With Roche for Design Day 2020

Sept. 9, 2020

The decades-long partnership between Roche Tissue Diagnostics (RTD) and the University of Arizona continued this year for Design Day 2020, which is the culmination of a year-long senior capstone project where seniors work in teams with professionals to solve engineering challenges.

Projects included capacitive volume sensing, authentication with facial recognition, personalized lab notifications, physical use interface for digital pathology, slide randomizing and an automated iButton placement device. UA engineering students working with Roche took home several awards this year. 

Organizing and completing the six company-sponsored Design Day projects was a group effort of more than 40 RTD colleagues led by Ben Blehm, staff systems engineer. The teams were sponsored by Roche employees from Hardware and Systems Development, Tissue Research and Early Development, Operations, and Assay and Reagent Development.

One unforeseen challenge the teams faced was completing their projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, with students and employees working from home.

“Most teams could not finish their prototypes or finish verification testing,” Blehm said. “However, a couple of our teams did get a working prototype due to excellent planning.”

BME student Alana Gonzales was part of the RTD team tasked with creating a sensor to measure fluid reagent levels.

“The biggest obstacle that arose for us was that, towards the end of the year, it became very difficult and sometimes impossible to order new parts and receive them in time to finish our prototype because production was slowed all over the world,” she said. “Despite this and the challenges of not being able to physically work together, I think our team did a great job of keeping in touch and doing the best we could to make as much progress on the project as possible.”

Roche-sponsored teams received the following awards during Design Day 2020: