Eric S. Smith '30 University Fellows Endowment Fund

During my Fellowship I focused on 3D designing and printing a prosthetic finger with the idea to find out which parts of the designs were best for creating my own prosthetic finger. The goals I pursued during this fellowship were to learn how to 3D design and print different objects but mainly fingers capable of being prosthetics. This helped me to develop the skills of 3D design and printing as well as learning how to design my own experiments and how to give a good presentation.

This research project explored electromagnetic induction, a topic that is often challenging for students. The primary goal was to create a hands-on learning experience to connect fundamental physics principles with the real-world applications of electricity and renewable energy. The project provided an opportunity to conduct a full research cycle, from initial concept and design to fabrication, data analysis, and final presentation.

The purpose of this project was to determine the steady state concentration of microplastics in freshwater clams, collected from various aquatic bodies in upstate New York. The concentration of microplastic in clam soft tissue as well as in clam fecal matter was determined through the chemical digestion procedure that utilized in situ Fenton’s reagent to break down organic material. Results showed that the mass of clam soft tissues have a positive correlation with the amount of reagent that had to be added.

Sports analytics are a constantly growing field, but little work has been done to incorporate analytics to video games. This summer through my project, I wanted to see if similar tools that are used in professional sports could be applied to sports video games, specifically to predict Rocket League game outcome. I utilized a variety of statistical learning methods to investigate which statistics were most positively or negatively associated with winning, and built a random forest model that classified games as wins/losses correctly with almost 90% accuracy.

Currently most general consumer prosthetics are basic devices with limited functionality and while sophisticated prosthetics with advanced motion and sensation do exist, they are at a price point out of reach for the general consumer. While there are groups working on increasing the motion and sensation capabilities of prosthetics, often there is not a focus on developing them at low price points and thus they are too expensive for the general consumer. That’s where my research comes in.