college station texas - space engineering institute (sei) students from texas a&m university texas a&m-kingsville and texas a&m-commerce presented their fall 2007 projects nov 16 sei is a center of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) seis undergraduate research program funded by nasa focuses on student retention in engineering especially students from underrepresented groups (women and ethnic minorities) the program is in its fifth year with more than 50 engineering undergraduate students enrolled at the three different universities students join sei during their freshman year and are placed on interdisciplinary teams to work on applied research projects sponsored by nasa the texas a&m materials team worked with a bio-sensor technology developed by dr allison ficht and dr xiaofeng kang at the department of molecular and cellular medicine at texas a&m the team developed a design that will test multiple biosensors on a single zero-gravity flight to evaluate the technology for its use on space exploration the team submitted their proposal to nasa and hopes to be selected for flight testing in spring 2008 team mentors are ficht kang and graduate student erin bishop the team includes jahaziel chavira senior mechanical engineering; jennifer kirchner senior aerospace engineering; daniel grimes senior computer science; katy westhoff junior aerospace engineering; opeyemi ijagbemi junior ocean engineering; nikhil bhatnagar sophomore aerospace engineering; norma horn sophomore mechanical engineering; and brannon veal sophomore electrical engineering the texas a&m pretreatment team identified a non-toxic pretreatment alternative to enable water reclamation for long term space applications the team completed testing with minimum concentrations of acetic and glycolic acids and evaluated the use of pyruvic and citric acids as possible pretreatment candidates in addition they evaluated the use of a bioreactor to assess pretreatment chemical toxicity the team will present their findings at the earth and space conference of american society of civil engineering in march 2008 team mentors are dr karen pickering from nasa jsc and texas a&m graduate student julianna camacho the team includes sara guest senior chemical engineering; moriah thompson senior biomedical engineering; marco cienega jr junior mechanical engineering; julianne larson junior aerospace engineering; emily dossman freshman aerospace engineering; warnessa freeman freshman chemical engineering; natalie pilzner freshman aerospace engineering; and leann smith freshman biomedical engineering the texas a&m-kingsville mechanical battery team designed a safe efficient mechanical battery that stores energy in a mechanical form for use on the space station the team presented a mechanical battery design which includes a electromagnetic clutch braking system housing and mounting plates of the gear system composite strips and transformer/electrical configuration they completed modeling and testing the composite strips in both tension and torsion in addition they updated and optimized the gear design to accommodate tension elements the team led by dr larry peel and graduate student dustin grant includes javier lozano senior mechanical engineering; victor castillo senior mechanical engineering; hector hernandez senior electrical engineering; krystal gunter junior electrical engineering; and luis muratalla sophomore mechanical engineering the texas a&m-kingsville laundry in space team designed a process to wash disinfect and dry lightly soiled clothing in the micro-gravity environment of the international space station the team developed a design that uses a vacuum-based approach to remove soil and stains from laundry the design was tested improved with new materials to remove leakages and tested again results show a vacuum process alone is not sufficient to wash and dry clothing in the desirable amount of time the team researched alternative approaches to improve effectiveness of the process they will incorporate agitation and a multi-stage process to improve their design the team also led by peel and grant includes trey evans sophomore mechanical engineering; victoria bailey freshman mechanical engineering; michael gutierrez freshman mechanical engineering; and eli hatfield freshman electrical engineering the texas a&m tele-operation team is working to complete projects such as successfully tele-operating a texas a&m truck and developing a 3d environment at the space engineering institute the team was able to setup the cave hardware and landform software gps-reference models and wireless network connections this enabled them to send and receive data and to establish a connection with the gps and imu units of the texas a&m truck the team led by dr tamas kalmar-nagy and stephen glenn includes angelo bianchini senior mechanical engineering; amanda collins senior aerospace engineering; john quiñones senior chemical engineering; david roden senior computer science; david taylor senior aerospace engineering; ernest everett junior mechanical engineering; agustin maqui junior aerospace engineering; marcus payne junior aerospace engineering; christine tipton sophomore biomedical engineering; jason york sophomore aerospace engineering; and jc reeves freshman aerospace engineering the texas a&m robotics team designed and demonstrated the cooperative lifting and transportation of a construction object using two robots the team presented their modeling and simulation approach for robot kinematics the use of an overhead camera for inertial measurements odometry error investigation and mitigation kalman-filter simulations and simple path-planning algorithms the team participated in the texas space grant consortium design challenge nov 20 where they received first place in team dynamics second place in oral presentation third place in project model and runners-up in best technical paper the team led by dr johnny hurtado and graduate student lesley weitz includes jesse bowes senior computer science; kristen holmstrom senior aerospace engineering; dennis underwood senior aerospace engineering; matt wilson senior computer engineering; kelli boehringer junior aerospace engineering; amy bolon junior mechanical engineering; roy palacios junior electrical engineering; tyler thurston junior aerospace engineering; and albert soto freshman mechanical engineering a&m-commerce fluorescent microscopy using leds team designed and built a portable fluorescent microscope for counting bacteria the team submitted their presentation but was not able to attend due to class conflicts they developed a prototype automated the sample analysis and investigated the confirmation of the specificity of bacterial detection currently they are working towards testing the prototype in nasas microgravity environment the team led by dr frank miskevich includes jeremy harr tiffany selvidge sophie metafaria and dale moore for more information on the sei program contact director magda lagoudas at m-lagoudas@tamuedu