Ian Scheffler
Consider the following problems: Every year, millions of people struggle to recover mobility following strokes. Hundreds of millions need eye exams, but live far from practicing optometrists. Billions of tires expire, leaching toxic chemicals into the food chain. And as AI systems grow larger, they require more and more power to perform the same operations.
To this year’s graduating class of Penn Engineers, these problems are also opportunities. At the 2025 Senior Design Project Competition, four teams won awards for demonstrating how to improve stroke recovery, automate eye exams, turn old tires into battery components and improve the efficiency of AI computation.
“We had our largest turnout of online and in-person alumni judges this year, with over 60 alums participating,” says Bradley Richards (C’92, LPS’17), Director of Alumni Relations at Penn Engineering, who manages Senior Design. “It was, arguably, the highest quality of presentations to date — a day to celebrate all our student teams and the outstanding work they delivered.”
The finals took place on May 2, in Penn Engineering’s newest building, Amy Gutmann Hall, and the four winners received awards in categories ranging from social impact to technological innovation.
Robert Ghrist, Penn Engineering’s Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, joined Lyle Brunhofer (ENG’14, GEN’14), Vice President and Senior Design Chair of the Engineering Alumni Society, to hand out the awards.
Congratulations to all the student teams for their outstanding projects. The four winning teams, voted on by alumni judges, are:
Judges’ Choice Award
ReFLEX (Bioengineering)
Students: Udit Garg (ENG’25, GEN’25), Aditya Gowd (ENG’25, GEN’25), Ryann Joseph (ENG’25), William Qi (EE’25, GEN’26) and Christopher Wun (ENG’25, GEN’25)
Advisor: Erin Berlew (Gr’22), Research Associate, Developmental Mechanobiology and Regeneration Lab
The Judges’ Choice Award, which recognizes overall excellence, went to Bioengineering’s ReFLEX, which developed a novel tool for improving stroke recovery.
Today, the gold standard for stroke recovery is functional electrical stimulation (FES), which involves sending electrical signals to muscles. However, FES is costly and doesn’t always work.
New research has shown that pairing FES with patients’ imagination produces better results: when the brain imagines moving the body, and those muscles receive electrical stimulation, the brain-body connection strengthens.
To take advantage of this finding, ReFLEX developed a headset that reads patients’ brainwaves, using AI to interpret the motions they imagine, before sending electrical signals to the relevant muscles.
Following their success at Senior Design, the team plans to file a patent and begin clinical testing.
Technology and Innovation Award
Lattice (Electrical and Systems Engineering)
Students: Zirun Han (C’25, ENG’25, GEN’25), Alexander Kyimpopkin (EE’25, GEN’26), Rose Wang (ENG’25, W’25, GEN’26) and Spencer Ware (ENG’25, GEN’26)
Advisors: Troy Olsson and Deep Jariwala, Associate Professors in Electrical and Systems Engineering
One of the greatest AI challenges is energy consumption. Next year, according to the International Energy Agency, the world’s AI data centers will consume nearly as much power as the country of Germany.
In large part, this is due to the demands of vector-matrix multiplication, a key AI mathematical operation. Increasing the size of the matrices, a necessity for advancing AI, exponentially increases the required number of computations.
Using resources at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, Lattice developed a new chip to solve this problem. Their device leverages so-called “analog” computing to physically embed certain parts of the process in the chip itself.
The result is a chip for AI that uses less energy, demonstrating that vector-matrix multiplication can be accomplished at lower cost.
Leadership Award
Prism Optics (Bioengineering)
Students: Daniel Botros (ENG’25, GEN’26), Fady Fahmy (ENG’25, GEN’26), Daniel Jacobsohn Serebrinic (ENG’25, GEN’25), Danish Mahmood (ENG’25) and Aarush Sahni (C’25, ENG’25, GEN’25)
Advisor: Erin Berlew (Gr’22), Research Associate, Developmental Mechanobiology and Regeneration Lab
Hundreds of millions of people around the world live far from a practicing optometrist. This means that they can’t get glasses: without an eye exam, it’s impossible to know their prescription.
To solve this problem, Prism Optics developed a novel, low-cost device that automatically conducts eye exams, expanding access to eye care. Using audio prompts, the device guides users through the process, then prints out their prescription at the end.
Starting this summer, the team will begin clinical trials in collaboration with doctors at Penn Medicine, to validate the device against prescriptions from licensed optometrists.
Social Impact Award
ReTread Power, by JAAC (Materials Science and Engineering)
Students: Chiara Bruzzi (ENG’25, GEN’26), Julia Dase (ENG’25, GEN’26), Anna Hallac (C’25, ENG’25, GEN’26) and Amelia Pilot (C’25, ENG’25)
Advisor: Eric Huang, Senior Lecturer, Materials Science and Engineering
Every year, millions of tires wind up in the trash or are burned for disposal, leaching toxic chemicals into the environment. But what if those tires could be put to better use?
JAAC (pronounced “Jack”) developed a means of stripping a key toxic chemical from disposed tires, and turning the remaining material into hard carbon, a low-cost alternative to graphite, which can be used to build lithium- and sodium-ion batteries.
In a word ever more reliant on battery technology, the process could turn the millions of tires in landfills and burn pits into a valuable resource: the precursor to more clean energy.