As part of a 2 year long capstone project, I am researching and developing a cold plasma sterilization system to be applicable to surfaces, medical devices and skin. We are mainly working with a group within NASA known as XMC, or Exploration Medical Capabilities. The goal is to develop a cold plasma sterilization system that could potentially be used aboard the Orion Spacecraft for long duration space exploration missions to Mars and distant asteroids, with the ultimate goal of reducing their payload. The issue to be addressed is that all of the small medical equipment that is carried on a mission — scalpels, forceps, those sorts of items — are one-time use. The cost of payload in LEO, or Low Earth Orbit, is about $10,000 per pound, which would increase exponentially for a mission to Mars. To add a little perspective, NASA carries anywhere from 200-400 kg of sanitary wipes for redundancy, which could be greatly decreased with a sanitize and reuse strategy possible with this system.

Cold plasma applications in medical sterilization is an emerging field of research. The project encompasses several disciplines within engineering, including electrical engineering, materials science, mechanics of materials, and systems engineering. With regards to sterilization, the system must be able to sterilize specific bacteria, such as E. coli and the shingles virus. The team is building a custom integrated circuit, machining the necessary parts, and minimizing weight as much as possible. The goal of the system is to determine the optimal conditions to operate the system that would result in the highest sterilization of bacteria. The conditions that would be varied in the design of experiments were the frequency, voltage, and distance from the housing subsystem to the substrate subsystem. Once the optimal conditions were determined, a new prototype could be developed that operates strictly at the specified conditions.

A human powered vehicle was built specifically for our 8 year old client named Michael. Michael was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at a young age, specifically spastic hemiplegia. Hemiplegia is where one half of the body is affected, in this case the left side of his body. The human powered vehicle was specifically tailored for him, taking in to account his condition. This project really exposed me to the design process on a larger scale. We conducted stakeholder interviews with Michael and his mother, watched him workout to see his strength, and took his body measurements to tailor it specifically to him. Unlike my freshman year project, this project had a lot of failures, which was a hard pill to swallow. I learned a valuable lesson that failure is an inevitable part of engineering design, and it made me a better engineer in the process. Within the project, I focused on the propulsion subsystem and the fork of the human powered vehicle, which is a part of the steering subsystem.

In order to get exposed to the engineering design process and designing specifically for a client, the goal was to develop a children's toy using wood. The clients were local Harrisonburg elementary school students who were brought in to test the products, as shown above. We conducted stakeholder interviews, developed system requirements, and manufactured a prototype to deliver to the clients. The children were able to keep the toys, which was very rewarding.

Digital Storytelling of the team's progress through the first year of the project.