Students roll out ingenuity at showcase
Innovation is a fundamental ingredient for economic growth, and this truism has become a mantra of corporate executives in recent years as they search for workers with the creative spark necessary to reignite industries affected by the recession.
Northrop Grumman is no exception, and one of the methods the company uses to cultivate and attract local talent is sponsoring the annual Northrop Grumman Engineering and Science Student Design Showcase at Florida Institute of Technology.
The showcase is a competition for Florida Tech students who have completed a research project with significant real-world implications. Many of these projects could result in profitable products down the road.
At this year's showcase, Florida Tech students presented a wide variety of inventions, including many that would be useful in military situations, such as a drone with high energy-efficiency and an atomic particle sensor.
Northrop Grumman executives say that the showcase helps them identify potential job candidates and to get fresh ideas about how to tackle technological challenges.
"We're very interested in collaboration, innovation and ingenuity. That's what we're looking to foster through this program," said John Firriolo, the chief engineer for Northrop Grumman's division of command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaisance.
Florida Tech junior Nora Al-Awadhi and sophomore Sohum Patel, two pre-med students, teamed up to investigate the cause of a fatal ailment known as "broken heart syndrome," which is, essentially, stress-induced heart failure. The syndrome, discovered in 2005, affects people in traumatic situations, such as those surprised by the death of a loved one and those stunned by random acts of violence. It leads to symptoms similar to those of a heart attack, even though X-rays reveal that it is not the same physical phenomenon.
Al-Awadhi knows from experience that broken heart syndrome can have devastating consequences, since her mother was impacted by the disorder in 2011 during a chemicals weapons attack in Bahrain. Like many of those affected by the syndrome, Al-Awadhi's mother had no prior heart condition before her near-death experience, so Al-Awadhi was determined to solve the mystery.
Through experimental testing of stress hormones on heart cells, Al-Awadhi and Patel believe they have illuminated how broken heart syndrome works. Their research findings suggest that the disease is a maladaptive response to stress hormones that destroys critical proteins in the heart, disrupts the communication between heart cells and disturbs the synchronization of heart beats. Al-Awadhi and Patel won the Best in Show award in the Biological Sciences category.
This project was not the only one at the Florida Tech showcase with medical implications. Another student project demonstrated how certain chemicals could minimize the physiological damage caused by chemical weapons and could thereby protect first responders.
Friday's showcase followed an announcement a day earlier by Florida Tech of its University-Corporation Alliance for Success (U-CAS) loyalty program. The program, similar to those at many high-tech universities across the United States, is meant to encourage working relationships between area businesses and Florida Tech in ways that benefit both.
The top prize winners were:
• The Northrop Grumman Champion Award for College of Engineering: "Variable Aspect Ratio Unmanned Aerial Vehicle," Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, advisers Razvan Rusovici, Ronnal Reichard and Yongki Go.
• The Northrop Grumman Champion Award for College of Science: "Characterization of GEM Detectors for use in the CMS Endcap System;" "A Discussion of Designing Pixel Readout Boards;" "and Spatial Resolution Study for a Large-Area GEM Detector with Zigzag Readout," Physics and Space Sciences, adviser Marcus Hohlmann.
• The President's Cup Award for College of Engineering: "Florida Tech NASAbotics," adviser Ronnal Reichard.
• The President's Cup Award for College of Science: "Spectroscopic Survey of Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxies," adviser Daniel Batcheldor.
Contact Kowarski at 321-242-3640 or ikowarski@floridatoday.com. Follow her at @IlanaKowarski.