Graduating Seniors Receive Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Engineering Projects

Seniors who completed a challenging year-long capstone course in the S.B. engineering program at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) were recognized with Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Engineering Projects at Thursday’s Design Fair.  

Winners were chosen from among the 56 students who completed ES100 projects, each of which addressed a real-world engineering problem. Three individual and two team projects received the awards, chosen by ES100 faculty, advisors and staff. Two additional students received Honorable Mentions. 

“I look forward to seeing how each and every one of you applies the skills and knowledge you gained at SEAS to advance our mission in your life and careers,” said SEAS Dean David Parkes at the April 30 award ceremony. 

• In bioengineering, Alex Sunday, advised by Benjamin Freedman with thesis reader David Mooney, won for “Establishing a Semi-Synthetic, Highly Entangled Hydrogel as a Scaffold for Cartilage Tissue Engineering.” Sunday engineered a hydrogel scaffold to support cell culture under mechanical conditions relevant to treating knee osteoarthritis, a common condition driven by progressive cartilage loss.
• In electrical engineering, Konstantinos Maliaris, advised by Vamsi Mootha with thesis reader Gu-Yeon Wei, won for “A Compact Point-of-Care System for Real-Time Mitochondrial Physiology Monitoring.” Maliaris designed and built a compact, all-optical physiology instrument capable of measuring fluorescence signals, absorbance, and dissolved oxygen concentrations from live mitochondrial samples in real time, with the goal of replacing bulkier and more expensive systems.
• In environmental engineering, Umar Azad, advised by Joseph O. Evans III and Jason Beckfield with thesis reader Fiamma Straneo, won for “Marsh Regeneration Pod and Use Case in Pointe-Au-Chien: Nature-Based Solutions for Community-Stewarded Coastal Restoration in Louisiana.” Azad designed a coastal restoration system called a Marsh Regeneration Pod that cultivates biomass and microbial communities, later redeployed as living shoreline infrastructure using locally sourced materials such as compost and native plants.
• In mechanical engineering, Kuma McCraw and Mikaya Parente, advised by Stephanie Gil, won for “Modular VHF Signal Sensing Fixed-Wing Drone Platform for Autonomous Sperm Whale Rendezvous Tracking and Validation.” As part of the international Project CETI, McCraw and Parente designed and built an aerial robotic platform for harsh marine environments that can autonomously locate and rendezvous with whales to guide researchers toward likely surfacing locations.
• In mechanical engineering, Isabel Laguarda and Jennifer Nguyen, advised by Frank Keutsch, won for “Advancing Accessible Stratospheric Climate Research: Design of a High-Altitude Particle Exposure Analysis Pod.” Laguarda and Nguyen designed and prototyped a Particle Exposure Analysis Pod (PEApod), a compact capsule compatible with a high-altitude balloon that exposes aerosol samples to stratospheric conditions and preserves them for later analysis. 

Two other projects earned Honorable Mentions: 

• In bioengineering, Saron Meressi, advised by Yi Wang and William Pu, with thesis reader Jennifer Lewis, for “A Tunable Ventricle-Specific Gene Delivery System.”
• In electrical engineering, Ike Ogbu, advised by Gage Hills, for “Voltage Regulator Module Design Using Wide Bandgap Semiconductors for Graphics Processing Units.” 

One additional senior, Viktor Bokisch, received an external award from the New York City post of the Society of American Military Engineers for outstanding undergraduate academic achievement.