Creating an Emissions Free Drive System for Cars

 Thomas McCullough, Verrazzano Class of 2022, completed major in Electrical Engineering 

For my capstone project, under the mentorship of Professor Alfred Levine my group and I developed the Dual Flywheel Propulsion system for Cars, an innovative research design to create an emissions free drive system.

Modern energy storage methods such as lithium-ion batteries are inefficient and untenable, demanding rare earth metals and becoming obsolete in a short period. Technological enhancements we've developed will produce hybrid energy storage and recovery systems that are sustainable and cohesive with the environment.

Our goal for the project was to create a microscale energy storage system that could be scaled up to a passenger vehicle. The development predicated the design for a dual flywheel system. While a single flywheel system allowed for kinetic storage, it is prone to fall victim to gyroscopic effects occurring during any change in direction. Instead, with the double flywheels on the same axis, spinning at the same speed in opposite directions completely offsets the gyroscopic effects, allowing for freedom of motion in any direction.

This project has been the most immense engineering learning experience thus far for my undergraduate career. It involved an intense design process from start to finish, beginning with just a simple physics concept and ending with a full working physical model. Under current conditions the design works well, though for our full ambitions to be realized there is still work to be done. By taking advantage of the strength of Carbon fiber composite and the quadratic nature of stored energy a massively large amount of energy can be stored. My team and I hope to continue working on this project even past graduation.

I’m thankful to the Verrazzano Honors program for allowing me the opportunity to grow and succeed as a student during my time here at CSI.  

Groupvie: A Movie Matchmaker

Joseph DeMario, Verrazzano Class of 2022, completed major in Computer Science and minor in Cinema Studies

My initial idea for my capstone project was to combine my computer science major with my cinema studies minor in the form of an iOS mobile application, where I would implement both the back-end and front-end functionality. The purpose of the app would serve as a bridge between Tinder and Fandango, where users could create an account and match with other users according to their movie interests and preferences. 

In order to display a number of films, I turned to The Movie Database API (TMDB) to grab data for movie and TV posters, release dates, and summaries. Even with these ideas in mind, I found it difficult to come up with a name for the application. It was not until the end of the development that I came up with a name: Groupvie (combining the words “group” and “movie” together). The name fully encapsulates the overall objective of the app which is to connect users based on movies. 

In regard to front-end implementation, I achieved just that through the use of Xcode and its ability to design the user interface of the app. In terms of my intended UI design for the app, there are still some things I would like to work on. I originally wanted the main home screen to follow that of Tinder’s; the only difference is that users would swipe left or right on movies rather than people. After a number of swipes, users would match with each other based on their movie preferences. The final product has users add a movie to their favorites list which other people on the platform can see to determine if they want to interact with them. The Tinder algorithm matches users automatically, whereas Groupvie needs the user to essentially do the matching for it. 

For the back-end implementation I utilized Firebase, a database that stores user accounts and messages. Additionally, future plans and improvements for the app include extending the capability of the chat screen to group chats rather than just a single user and finishing development on an events screen so users can view scheduled watch parties and movie nights with each other.

Overall, I believe I achieved everything I wanted with this project and I will look to continue to improve it in the future.  

Researching How Co-Sleeping Affects Infant Sleep

Rehab Sobhi, Verrazzano Class of 2022, completed major in Psychology with minors in Photography and Spanish 

Joining the Research Child Development Lab in the Fall Semester of 2020 was a strange yet memorable experience in my college years. It was strange because it was in the middle of the pandemic and everything was switched to online, and the whole purpose of this lab is to interact with infants and toddlers depending on the specific research.

Throughout my research semesters, I participated in assisting on a project called Sleep States – 5 Nights. The research study was conducted to monitor infants’ sleep onset, wake time, nightly wake episodes, sleep duration, and sleep efficiency. Before crawling, infants wore a monitor called an actigraph around their left ankle until they were able to walk independently. Moreover, a Nanit Home Baby Monitor recorded activity during the night, and daily parent dairies were used to keep track of any skills that developed over time and any nightly wake periods. Data collected from three nights per month, videos before, on, and after milestone acquisition were coded for REM and non-REM intervals.

As an assistant, there were several tasks required that allowed me to gain knowledge in the research field and make sense of specific scientific terminologies. For instance, I completed subject payments, which is a PDF booklet summarizing the baby’s results and thanking them for engaging, follow up on emails with parents in attempt to have their baby to participate, read literature as well look at my mentors’ papers including their dissertation, and so much more. This became a challenge at times as I have no particular interest in the science field and I tend to get distracted once the terms get too difficult for me to understand. However, I am thankful that I chose a research lab with great mentors that took the time to patiently explain things more than once if needed and did not allow for me to complete a task without understanding the major points even if I am not necessarily partaking in the study. I became more eager to comprehend the material and decided to participate in this specific research lab because the main subjects were babies. I always wanted to learn more about their development and why they may act a certain way, whether it was because of a milestone or because they learn from human interaction, mainly their parents.

Reading previous papers my mentor had written gave me the opportunity to discover what was already researched and what topics may have been vaguely mentioned and could be expanded on. As I was reading one paper, there was a sentence including co-sleeping and bed sharing that led me to the topic and question of my Capstone, “How Does Co-Sleeping Affect Infant Sleep?”. I presented my research at the the virtual Undergraduate Research Conference in the Spring 2021. As difficult as it was to navigate certain steps in completing the “poster” virtually, it was an unforgettable experience and thankfully a smooth process altogether. From there, I continued from my mini study to completing my Capstone paper in the last two semesters. Some obstacles I came across that prevented me from completing tasks in a timely manner included miscommunication, late responses from both the professor and I, personal matters such as moving, and many more. All in all, this research journey emphasized that starting off with bumps across the road will eventually lead you to the final destination of success.

Researching Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes Treatments

 Egor Volcotrub, Verrazzano Class of 2022, completed major in General Biology 

I worked under the mentorship and supervision of Grozdena Yilmaz to complete my capstone project. The focus of my project was to collect data and show the effectiveness of technologies in treating Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

Being a Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus patient myself and having work experience in endocrinology, I found that a wide population of patients suffering from those conditions are unaware or mistrust new technologies that help to improve their health.

Although sticking to traditional treatment methods (such as multiple daily insulin injections and  fingerstick testing) helps to treat diabetes, they are not as effective and comfortable as insulin pumps  and continuous glucose monitoring devices (CGMs). The initial goal of the capstone project was to  raise awareness among people who might be struggling with those conditions and could potentially  benefit from the available technologies.

For data collection, I used PubMed to find appropriate peer-reviewed articles and clinical data. Considering that the project was focused on the FDA-approved devices, all of them had clinical trial information available. Due to the fact that those devices are manufactured by unrelated pharmaceutical companies, the clinical trials were different in recruited patient’s population.

Although it initially created obstacles in combining data, all of them had a common comparison value used to indicate diabetic control. Another obstacle came from collecting data, specifically on the population suffering from Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Those patients may or may not require insulin injection, depending on the severity of their condition. Therefore, it is harder to recruit patients for those study groups, and not all companies have research data available for T2DM.

Overall, I felt like preparing the project and presenting it was a difficult task but having support from my advisor and peers I was able to overcome this obstacle. Not only I have collected valuable data to spread awareness on technologies that help treat diabetes, but I also found additional information that in the future will help me to manage the condition I am struggling with. As I have focused only on the most popular pharmaceutical devices, in the future, collecting information on other brands available can help to enhance the outcomes of this research project.