April 21, 2017
Forty projects featured in SVSU Science and Engineering Symposium
Saginaw Valley State University on Friday, April 21, will host its winter 2017 Science and Engineering Symposium, where the public can view the work students performed on 40 projects.
The projects include work from biology and chemistry students as well as those majoring in electrical and mechanical engineering.
Some of the science projects include making water-soluble plastic from Gulf shrimp shells and analysis on lemongrass and lavender essential oils. The engineering projects include developing a “smart kennel” that aims to decrease the number of relinquished pets and determining the feasibility of an in-car ambulance detection system.
Some of the projects also collaborated with regional organizations such as Dow Corning, Great Lakes Pet Emergencies, Nexteer Automotive and Duro-Last.
On Friday morning beginning at 10 a.m., students will be discussing and displaying their posters for their projects on the first floor of Pioneer Hall. There will be posters for 14 chemistry projects, nine mechanical engineer projects, seven biology projects, and seven electrical engineering projects. There also is one poster each for a computer information systems project, a physics project, and a Saginaw Bay Environmental Science Institute project.
Following lunch, oral presentations on some of those projects begin at 1 p.m. on the second floor of Pioneer Hall. There will be five mechanical engineering presentations in Pioneer 245, four mechanical engineering senior design presentations in Pioneer 247, four electrical engineering presentations in Pioneer 240 and two biology presentations in Pioneer 242.
The keynote speaker for the symposium is Giselle Tamayo-Castillo, the president of the Costa Rica National Council for Science and Technology and a chemistry professor at the University of Costa Rica. Tamayo-Castillo is a globally recognized expert in rainforest ecosystem with research expertise in genotyping of rainforest organisms and discovering new pharmaceuticals using those plants.
Tamayo-Castillo will speak at 9 a.m. in Science East 204 following opening remarks from Frank Hall, the dean of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology.