HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Postdoctoral fellow Nicholas Geisse (from left), William Adams '06, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering Kit Parker, and postdoctoral fellow Mark Bray are all members of the Disease Biophysics Group led by Parker. Adams is holding a multimeter (the 'prize') for winning with his senior engineering design project.

The winner of this year's ES100-100hf senior engineering design project course competition aimed straight for the heart by recording an electrical "ballad." The runners-up (a tie for second), meanwhile, worked themselves to the bone and relied on "heavy metal" riffs. All three, narrowed down from a group of more than a dozen talented Harvard seniors, impressed the panel faculty judges with their performances (and of course, those colorful PowerPoint presentations).

First-place accolades went to William Adams '06 who created a microelectrode array, a 14 - by-14 millimeter "data collector" for cardiac electrophysiological experimentation. The array, a tight arrangement of gold electrodes adhered to a glass substrate (imagine a tiny bed of nails), was built entirely within the Center for Nanoscale Systems' cleanroom. Adams' adviser Kit Parker, assistant professor of bioengineering, explains that the array will enable researchers to better study tissue-scale electrical interactions for in vitro (test tube-based) cardiac activity and will aid in collecting data during simulated heart attacks and under other experimental conditions.

Runners-up Chelsea Simmons '06 and Robert Everett '06 both used their engineering prowess to improve surgical techniques. Simmons presented an expanding screw system for use in spinal fusions, a common remedy for back pain where vertebrae are joined together to eliminate motion and friction. Her "smart" two-part screw enables greater hold between fused vertebrae for older people with osteoporotic, or low-density, bone and allows for easy injections of stem cells or bone substitutes. Simmons worked with Mike Slivka of DePuy Spine, a company that manufactures orthopedic devices.

Everett teamed up with another group of experts, knee-injury specialists from Baptist Orthopedic Hospital. Led by Mark Steiner, the physicians are focused on improving tendon graft techniques for injuries to the anterior-cruciate ligament (ACL). Finding the best orientation for a graft, a process now done by hand with a spring scale and torque wrench, may prove critical for long-term post-surgery success. To make testing easier and more accurate, the budding mechanical engineer built a pneumatic-powered machine that holds a cadaver knee and allows the operator to apply force and rotation to the bones and assess the result.