Allie Obermeyer, assistant professor of chemical engineering, is among this year’s Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2023. The award is given by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation for faculty within five years of their academic careers who have created an outstanding independent body of scholarship, and are deeply committed to education. 

Obermeyer, who joined Columbia Engineering in 2017, focuses on developing novel protein-based materials to address problems in biomedicine, biotechnology, and synthetic biology. In recent years, Obermeyer has teamed with Helen Lu, Hudson Professor of Biomedical Engineering, on the development of bioengineering sustainable textiles. The Columbia Engineering professors partnered with Theanne Schiros, a Columbia research scientist and an associate professor at FIT, on the startup Werewool, which uses protein structures in place of plastics to make fibers that can biodegrade and return nutrients to the soil, making the clothing supply chain more sustainable. Werewool recently won the ELLE & Polestar Design Towards Zero Award for innovators who use new and circular materials within the fashion industry, and has also raised $3.7 million in seed funding from investors. 

Prior to Columbia, Obermeyer was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, and obtained her PhD in chemistry and chemical biology from the University of California, Berkeley and her BS in chemistry from Rice University. She has won an NSF CAREER Award, the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Columbia Engineering Alumni Association, and the Andrew D. Morsey Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence from the Chemistry Department at the University of California, Berkeley. 

As a Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar, she and the 18 award winners will receive an unrestricted research grant of $100,000. Established in 1946 by chemist, inventor, and businessman Camille Dreyfus, the foundation’s stated mission is to advance the science of chemistry, chemical engineering, and related sciences as a means of improving human relations and circumstances throughout the world. 

Columbia Engineering’s Class of 2023 showcased their inventive solutions to challenging problems at the 8th annual Senior Design Expo. Projects varied from an approach that aims to reinvent IV (intravenous) administration for NICU patients to a novel capture system to remove space debris. More than 50 teams spanning eight departments presented their innovations and research at a packed showcase held May 4 at Roone Arledge Auditorium to a crowd of peers, professors, alumni, and STEM enthusiasts.

The biomedical engineering team behind NuJet (Anjali Nair, Isa Nuñez, Athena Pagon, Vish Rao, Elías Tzoc-Pacheo), attempted to solve the need for a cost-effective vaccine delivery to make vaccines more accessible, sustainable, and sanitary. 

“Syringes and needles are the most common form of vaccine delivery, despite many of the components being single-use,” said Pagon. 

On top of this, there are strict storage, transportation and disposal requirements, leading to a high-cost model that is typically only accessible in high resource centers. Their solution, a low-cost needle-less injector, generates a pressurized fluid stream that delivers the vaccine right below the skin while reducing cross-contamination, waste, and cost.

Inspired by individuals who suffer from overstimulation and anxiety, the electrical engineering students behind Musical Meditation (Tess Fallon, Alexandr Petuhov, Leonardo Arvan, Madeline Denis) developed a pair of headphones that reads the user's heart rate, while playing calming music that adjusts itself in an attempt to slow down the person’s heartbeat. 

Some designs focused on improving existing solutions. AMPF, also known as the Automated Pothole Filler (Jose Chanchavac, Phillipe Dumeny, Javier Lopez, Jerry Qu, Justin Tucker) aimed to simplify the process of filling potholes, which typically requires work from a large team of workers, typically five to 10 people at a time. “Our solution greatly reduces the number of people needed to about one to two workers,” said Javier Lopez, who recently received a degree in mechanical engineering. While AMPF focused on earthly solutions, DEMI (Miles Huntley-Fenner, Christina Wrightm Yidi Reiss, Leon Aharonian, Nicolas Aldana) focused on safely securing space debris, also known as space junk, which poses a serious threat to the welfare and sustainability of orbital activities. Their two-stage capture system encloses the debris and seals it in a storage chamber, which is something that other solutions lack.

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Sustainability was a common theme among many projects, with the expectation of improving systems that currently affect the environment. AQUA4 (Anton Deti, Emily Milian, Itai Savin, Kennedi Wade) developed a water rerouting system that repurposes water used in the bathroom. Students from the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering researched how best to treat contaminated soil in New York City, with hopes to rid the soil of harmful metals such as lead and arsenic (Mantjita Camara, Emily Lord, Dane Miller). 

Many civil engineering models were built this year with sustainability in mind, from re-designing Dam systems to better serve the flora and fauna of the surrounding area (Ruben Bazalar, Caroline Cailloux, Kevin Cardenas, Yunus Kovankaya, Zhihao Liu, Ariana Novo) to cost-effective Brooklyn housing made entirely of recycled shipping containers (Charlie Henry Renner, Abraham Oh, Katherine Koziol, Amin Mojarad, Isabella Citera, Tes S DeJaeger). 

Other visionary projects aimed to improve skills, through games and physical exercise. With focus on creativity, the students behind ZyloZinger (Sienna Brent, Alex Yu, Haris Zia) created an interactive xylophone game that challenges hand-eye coordination. In an effort to improve athletic training, Deadliftr (Yelaman Sain, Kyrie Lorfing, Matt Klenk, Sam Wustefeld, Will Hamilton) aimed to develop a device to help weightlifters on their deadlift training, creating a wireless device that gives athletes real-time feedback on their form. 

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“I feel inspired and energized by all of the inventive projects on display here today and I know the rest of you feel the same,” said Dean Shih-Fu Chang in his address preceding the event. “It truly shows how creative our field of engineering and applied science is and our commitment to being engineers for humanity.”