2023-2024

Tips on Starting your College Application!

August 23, 2023 - 1:54PM EDT | Susan Brisson

While the temperatures are still summerish here in Needham, the Olin Class of 2027 has arrived on campus, and fall is in the air!  You can keep your sweaters packed away for a few more weeks, but I would strongly encourage you to begin thinking about your college applications (like you haven’t been thinking about them all summer, I’m sure!). The first step in any big endeavor is always the hardest one to take, so with that, I have a few tips to help you start your college applications.

Failure Mode Analysis of NFC Near Plumbing Infrastructure

Our objective was to learn about the possibilities and limitations of modern tools and strategies for near field communication (NFC) in various environments for smartphone-powered IoT. We researched existing technologies and standards, designed a custom PCB, app, and testing rig, and provided data-backed insights to Watts to help their future product designs.

SparkCharge Roadie V3 Environmental Hardening

A major obstacle to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles is the inability to refuel as efficiently as their internal combustion counterparts. SparkCharge, a leader in mobile EV charging solutions, currently serves markets across the United States, with services ranging from out-of-charge assistance to large-scale fleet charging. To ensure SparkCharge products are capable of providing consistent and reliable coverage at all times, the SparkCharge SCOPE team aimed to introduce retrofittable solutions to the Roadie V3 system that eliminate vulnerabilities during severe weather conditions.

Water Everywhere: Understanding & Preventing Frozen Pipe Bursts with Modern IoT

Our SCOPE project aimed to solve the pipe-freezing problem by upgrading existing plumbing systems with intelligent sensing and action-taking. Specifically, we explored how LoRa®, modern low-power IoT (Internet of Things) technology from Semtech, can let us predict potential pipe bursts and take action to mitigate the problem.

VIEW 2.0: Direct Vision Assessment System

Our SCOPE team collaborated with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, the Santos Foundation, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) to reinvent VIEW, a blind-zone measurement tool for vehicles and a crowd-sourced database of blind-zones created by the 2017-2018 SCOPE team. VIEW 2.0 will be used to help design, select, and deploy safer vehicles, demonstrating the importance of direct vision for traffic safety involving vulnerable road users. 

Clinical Supply Study Complexity and Risk Assessment

Our team was tasked with identifying opportunities for improved quantitative analysis for GCS complexity scoring. We leveraged existing data to propose a new complexity model and updated dashboard visualizations to deliver precise metrics to better inform GCS decision making.

New Balance Manufacturing Innovation

New Balance is dedicated to increasing manufacturing within the United States and building new technology into their automated manufacturing processes. The Manufacturing Innovation SCOPE team designed and prototyped solutions that automate several critical, labor-intensive steps in materials processing for shoe manufacturing. Automating these steps in the manufacturing process increase operator safety and reduce production time.

High-throughput pH Characterization of Lipid Nanoparticle Formulations

The Olin SCOPE team was tasked with designing a device to perform 96 pH measurements within 15 minutes. This first-in-class technology is an order of magnitude faster than current methods and will greatly expedite the characterization of new formulations.

LineVision Satellite Communications Development Team

Olin’s SCOPE team implemented commercial low bandwidth satellite connectivity compatibility into the LUX system, LineVision’s patented contactless LiDAR scanning service; doing so allows LineVIsion to expand coverage to include remote areas with insufficient cellular coverage. This new system will ultimately improve the capacity, resiliency, and safety of the grid.

Sustainable Investing: Developing a Novel ESG Tool for the Next Generation of Investors

Our SCOPE team developed OVBI (Olin Value Based Investing), an experimental accessible and user-friendly values-based investing tool that could serve as a comprehensive method for evaluating and grading different companies based on their genuine practices.

Identifying Potential New Materials for Endoluminal Vacuum Therapy

Boston Scientific, a leader in the medical device industry, tasked the 2023-2024 BSC SCOPE team with the challenge of identifying potential alternative materials to make EVT more effective and minimize the judgement calculations needed for doctors to customize sponges to patients.

Blue Origin: PCB Rework Station

In this project, our team worked closely with Blue Origin’s research and development lab to understand the standards and difficulties of PCBA rework and designed a workstation to revolutionize this process. This station is self-contained and significantly reduces lead times, allowing Blue Origin to complete all rework in-house.

Compact High-Voltage Power Supply for Nuclear Fusion Reactor

Avalanche Energy is working on new electrostatic confinement technology to make a bench top nuclear fusion generator. Our project was to investigate the feasibility of compact high voltage power supplies that can operate in the range of hundreds of kilovolts and interface with their preexisting system.

Amazon Object Manipulation Taxonomy

This year’s SCOPE team created an extensible object taxonomy framework and implemented an integrated active perception system to predict the performance of various object gripping strategies. This system can be used to enable a more diverse range of robot picking form factors and increase accuracy in warehouse operations at Amazon.