[Zephyr's "What We Call Sound" plays] Hi, my name is Ken Fincher.

I'm the vice president for advancement here at Oregon Tech.

We're in the Center For The Excellence In Engineering And Technology Building on our Klamath Falls campus.

We are at IDEAFest.

IDEAFest is something that allows our students to highlight the research that they've done throughout the year.

Many of them are their senior projects or capstone projects.

This is the lava tube exploration vehicle.

This is the Terrovox 300.

Industrial, not as cool version of the Ironman suit here.

Our project was a neutral line extension on a stretch of power line.

The Eulalona Trail acted as a fire break, Doing a couple drone flights out at the running Y Ranch.

Here shortly, we should see water coming out.

This is our 2025 Formula car.

This is our 2025 Baja SAE car.

We had the NASA project, and we build an experiment equivalent to the orbit.

We call it AgroPV dome.

So you're judging today.

I am a judge, and it's hard because there's so many good projects.

I'm Keegan Van Hook, and this is Us As We Are.

[Zephyr's "What We Call Sound" plays] Us As We Are is made possible in part by The Roundhouse foundation, a private family foundation that supports creative solutions to the unique challenges associated with rural culture and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

Additional funding by the Elizabeth C. Peace Memorial Fund for Education and Social Welfare, and by the Members of Southern Oregon PBS.

Thank you.

Oregon Tech is Oregon's polytechnic university.

We're often considered a STEM H university.

That's science, technology, engineering, math, and health care.

About half of our students go into health care fields.

The other's engineering, computer science, communications, business.

We've got tons of students presenting the different research and different projects that they've been working on, getting to show off all of their hard work and all of their ingenuity and creativity.

So it's pretty great day.

This is the lava tube exploration vehicle.

The lava tubes are on the moon.

They formed back when, like, the moon was volcanically active.

And so NASA is interested in exploring these tubes because they could provide an area for astronauts to stay for a while or even for future colonies since the, lava tubes can provide shelter from radiation and also micrometeorites.

And so we could set up a shelter in there, hopefully protect the astronauts.

And so this is kind of a prototype vehicle to help explore those tubes.

A couple of the main issues that we're running into are definitely the treads.

There's a reason why NASA or any space company doesn't use treads, is because, you know, mainly, if one tread breaks, the whole thing, kind of falls apart, and you can't drive anymore.

Yeah.

I can see the treads are maybe having some trouble with the smooth floor.

They're plastic.

Yeah.

I can imagine the, like, the Lunar Regolith, they might be able to get a little more grip.

So definitely looking into new drive systems, reducing weight since, you know, sending stuff to space is really expensive.

Some other things are adding, like, cameras and lights.

That's kind of important for exploring dark caves and stuff.

That's fascinating.

Those caves on the moon, I've always wondered about, like, what's down there?

Like, that's gotta be one of the craziest mysteries there is to being alive on Earth right now.

It's, like, what's up there on the moon?

What's inside the moon?

For yourself, are you interested in going into, like, working for NASA, working in space exploration?

How do you see your future?

Yeah.

That definitely is, like, kinda interesting.

Space is, like, really unexplored, and you get to work on a lot of big projects.

But, yeah, this is kinda like a stepping stone for that.

This the Terawatt box 300.

It's essentially a smart portable battery bank.

It kinda fits in between, like, the large power stations, like something like a Jackery, and the little phone battery banks that you could stick in your pocket.

This is kinda designed to be inbetween.

It could fit in a backpack.

It's designed to charge a big laptop like this at least twice.

So if you're on the go and you're doing a lot of like video editing or you're doing like CAD or software or things like that, you're gonna run down on your battery a lot.

And so the goal of this is to be able to charge your laptop on the go without something that's massive.

This thing is a little bit heavy, but it does have a lot of capacity.

It's 350 watt hours.

It delivers power via USB c. It has two of those ports on it, so you can charge basically anything that does USB C. I am a professor of chemistry here.

I also teach biology and I run a lab actually just down the hall.

We are an interdisciplinary research group, so we have students in our biology health sciences major, we have a student in applied psychology, we have mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, medical imaging technology, and they get to work together and collaborate and learn from each other the different ways.

Like how do these different groups of students think and are trained to think and approach problems, and so it's cool that they get to work together and teach each other.

We have a lot of projects related to engineering and healthcare.

I just saw a presentation based on cancer cells and trying to identify cancer cells and keep them from spreading throughout the body by a senior in college.

And I was like, wow, when I was that age, that was not something that I was worried about.

And these young people are looking at fantastic opportunities to mitigate wildfire, to help wildlife reproduce in the wild, to keep the ecosystem going.

So we're looking at native and invasive count in the Moorpark area near the Eulalona Trail.

So in 2003, there was a fire that kinda took over a lot of Moore Park, the Eulalona Trail acted as a fire break.

And so we have 10 different plot points, five on each side, the burned side and the unburned side.

So after a fire, there's a nutrient loading in the soil if it's high intensity fire, and it promotes forb growth, which is types of grasses, non woody stem plants.

In Moore Park, this area is traditionally bitter brush types of forest habitat, and it takes 35 to 100 years for them to reestablish after a fire, which is a really long time.

It's only been about 25 years.

So in our study, we were tracking how the plants respond.

And right now, there is a lot of natives after even only 25 years in the burn side, which is promising to look at, but there is quite a few invasives on both.

And so in our study, we are trying to help Moore Park make a plan for management for control burns in the future, to have less high intensity fires.

So am I correct to understand that if, like, if a wildfire passes through, is the idea that it might risk causing the invasive plants to kind of take over that area more quickly?

Yeah.

That's exactly the idea.

So in the end, the point is if we do control burns, to have less intermediate fires and reduce ladder fuels.

In the future, we'll not have high intensity fires, which introduce more natives and just keep the habitat as it should be.

I was doing a couple drone flights out at the Running Y Ranch to determine the best terrain and location for a new trail proposal that they wanted.

There's a couple of trails that are already running around the golf course, and they wanted the best location to connect the two.

And you can use software like ArcGIS to determine based on a couple of factors like slope and aspect and the vegetation on what location and route would be the best.

The drone collects the LiDAR data that I used for the elevation data.

One of the other projects that I just saw related to the creation of a device called the gauntlet.

Basically a device that would go on an arm that would help the military in radioactive areas or places where there might be contaminants and how that could be utilized to protect our military in the field.

We have like a Geiger counter, hazardous gas sensor, and then this is for our display, which we have have right here set up.

There are mechanical functions like this projectile launcher here and later a grip locking system for like super strength.

We'll be running off of these muscle sensors that read EMG signals from our muscles that can be converted into a voltage and then ran through this program so that we can make certain things happen through this Arduino.

What are the applications for something like this?

What do you kind of have in mind for where this would be used?

So our original one was military environmental feedback and on hand tools, but there's a lot of different options.

So it can be kind of developed into a biomechanical exoskeleton.

It can be used in aerospace, like in space suits.

I know they have a lot of dexterity issues, and so it can be applied there for specifically the grip locking system, which would be able to, you know, hold your hand closed.

So if they're working on any kind of engineering outside of the spacecraft that they don't lose those tools, stuff doesn't go flying in zero g's.

Next step is definitely revising our overall body.

I want it to be a little lighter weight.

The steel came out heavier than expected.

And I also want to kinda redo those finger pieces I was talking about.

They slip good how they're supposed to, but they're not perfect, and I want them perfect.

Our project was a neutral line extension on a stretch of power line starting in Beatty, Oregon, which is that substation right there.

We worked with Pacific Core to help design the new line.

Beatty, Oregon to Bly, Oregon, which is about seven miles of line.

Each line is about five feet apart from each other, and we wanna minimize the electric field.

Electric field is just basically wasted energy.

It's like heat dissipating from your car.

Pacific Core has done a couple of projects in the past years with the capstone class at Oregon Tech.

This was one of them.

They had been working on it a little bit, and so they wanted to bring us in and give the students a chance to really gain experience in the professional world.

We were just sitting in on their meetings that they were having every week, and then as we moved into the winter and the spring term, they allowed the six of us to start leading those meetings and kinda gain some experience.

What we learned about this one is that out in the rural areas, they're actually quite outdated because, the wood pole you see here, it is severely aged, outdated.

This is just one section, but it kinda raised the question, what does the rest of the state look like in the rural parts?

Because in the urban parts, I'm pretty sure it's up to code, but in the more rural parts, not just here, but all, like, all Eastern Oregon, how many of them are actually outdated?

It kinda really makes you think.

It's like, how much work needs to be done for the rest of the state?

Yeah.

So explain this space real quick.

I noticed on the ceiling you have these lights, they're in an interesting pattern, I believe that's binary, can you tell me what that says?

Yes, it's binary code.

Coming from my left to right, it's O I T O W L S, OIT OWLS.

There's windows on each of the classrooms so that, you can see what's going on.

And if there's an idea or an opportunity to be involved or to go in and share thoughts, you can do that.

So nothing's really behind closed doors except for our Boeing lab.

And that's proprietary for Boeing.

I got some secrets in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

So you're judging today.

I am a judge and it's hard because there's so many good projects, and each project has its own flavor and its own purpose.

It's just outstanding.

The coolest one I think I've seen so far is there's like a self hockey puck station where they made this robot that is like an AI tracking robot.

is the lawn watering robot.

It's designed to be a replacement for sprinkler systems, ideally.

Sprinkler systems commonly spray water, not on grass, on cement, on asphalt, things like that.

And so this is designed to be a more precise delivery system for water on grass.

The design idea is that it will drive to certain points on the lawn and it'll measure the moisture level of the soil.

And based on that, if it's below a certain threshold, will deliver water.

And it turns out it doesn't work very good, but that's all right.

And it's gonna get stuck.

I've got my tires, I've demoed this probably over 10 times already today, the tires kind of have a lot of wet grass and stuff.

It's just a vinyl tubing with holes cut into it.

You can see how it's connected to the valve with the fitting.

Oh, and then right next to your finger there is the moisture probe?

This is the linear actuator that drives the moisture sensor down.

Yeah.

So here shortly, we should see water come up.

There it is.

It's stuck again.

You could imagine it would move.

You could imagine that it's moving forward.

That way.

Oh, that's okay you know.

These are prototypes, and that's the point.

You gotta learn what's wrong with it, and what you can improve for the time.

Yeah.

I definitely learned a lot.

Nice.

This is our 2025 formula car.

So we have a rear wing integrated as well as an under tray, new side pods in order to shove more air into the radiators, and then new front wing and new nose cone as well.

They're made out of carbon fiber so that they're able to be really, really light.

And then we also incorporated Nomex hunting comb material in order to provide rigidity to these components as well.

We were pulling about a 120 pounds of downforce with about 60 pounds of drag overall.

We were also able to integrate a new seat this year that is actually molded to the driver.

We were able to pour foam into a garbage bag behind the driver, let it sit, and let it mold around them.

Ultimately, I'm really proud of what the team was able to accomplish.

We worked with a team of about 15 seniors who were able to put in the work, spend many long nights working on the car this year from scratch.

When do you race?

When does this thing actually get out on the track and and go for drive?

So we had a drive day before we left for competition, and then we went out to Michigan for competition.

We had one wheel that sadly did not lock up, and we ran out of time.

It was a faulty caliber, that we should have checked beforehand, but next year is gonna do really, really well.

So I'm looking forward to it.

This is our 2025 Baja SAE car.

Just a little background on Baja SAE.

It is a off road endurance race.

So I like to call it control chaos because they send a 100 schools out at once, and it's wheel to wheel.

So you could bump each other.

You could roll each other.

You could hit each other.

It's just complete chaos.

In Arizona this year, we got seventh in endurance, which is the best Oregon Tech's ever done.

And we finished 17th overall, which is also the best we've ever done out of 80 schools.

So we're super proud of that.

We changed a lot this year.

The frame got four inches shorter lengthwise and two inches out of the height.

It got about 10 pounds lighter, which was super, super helpful.

Complete new redesign on steering.

So new steering rack, new housing, straight column, no U-joints this year.

Complete new redesign in rear suspension.

We bent a lot of axles last year.

We ripped diffs out of the car.

It was just no good.

So completely redesigned.

We're a trailing a arm, much better suspension characteristics, much better handling.

The car actually feels stable, and you can actually slide it around corners without it interrupting or wanting to feel like it's gonna roll.

Eliminated about 60% of the weight out of the gear box just by taking the housing and making it round and a lot smaller to a 1/4 inch wall thickness from a 3/4 inch wall thickness.

So I know last year we were about 470 pounds and this year we're at 430 pounds.

Wow.

Nice.

So we dropped a lot of weight overall.

Super happy with how it's going.

It still runs even after racing.

One big thing that we do differently from formula is we actually have to bend and cope our own chassis.

Oh.

So our chassis shows up as a crate of 20 foot sticks of tube.

And we cut them, we bend them, we cope them, and then we all do all of our welding in house.

All of our machining's done in house.

We pretty much make everything on the car, but the engine diffs, tires, shocks.

Super cool to learn how to run all those machines and actually, you know, spend all that time making a product and then see it actually succeed and do well.

I'm Jordan Thielke.

That is John Frelinger.

We restored this EV vehicle over the course of the last few months for our senior project.

This is a Sparrow EV, and it's a fully electric three wheeled vehicle.

And if you wanna see it for a spin, let's do it.

Alright.

Oh, yeah.

You should take it for a spin.

I would love to take it for a spin.

This thing looks fun.

Alright.

So seat belt for safety.

Of course, which one's the brake?

There it is.

Okay.

Don't wanna make it sit down.

Hand brake down.

Hand brake down.

Pull up a little bit, there you go.

There we go.

And then we're gonna close this.

You're free to go.

All right.

Brake is a bit soft, so be aware.

Okay.

Alright.

Yeah.

Brake is a bit soft, but that's okay.

Got it.

That's really fun.

Yeah.

That's a blast.

I'm surprised how stable it is at being, like, kind of this reverse tricycle kind of configuration.

So how do you judge?

What are the criteria that you're using?

Well, we have a series of things.

They give us a list and it's, you know, the design, the formatting, the presentation, how well they understand and how usable is this project.

What would it mean for our communities?

Yeah, lots of diversity I would say in the projects and how the students are going about their projects.

Just overall really cool the way that each student has, like, totally creatively gone about their ideas.

Some of the greatest innovations are really the tiniest little things that solve what seem to be the tiniest little problems, but they're really the biggest issues.

You may have guessed that our first place IDEAFest winner is serotonin electrochemical sensor.

Hello, hello everybody.

I did not expect really to win.

I'm a freshman.

So with the serotonin electrochemical sensor, I, was developing this plan with Dr.

Edwards back in September.

I came to her, the first week of class, I was like, hey.

I really want to make change in the world, and I want to start with small with a serotonin electrochemical sensor because of its implications in science, in health care, and just those who struggle with mental health.

So it works similarly to a glucose monitor, prick of a finger, drop of blood, and it detects the serotonin concentrations in your body because they're present in your blood.

And if it exceeds a certain threshold, a LED lights up and tells you you have serotonin syndrome.

This is especially useful because serotonin syndrome does not have a method of detection today.

I love research, I love engineering, and I see myself back in Dr.

Edwards' lab in the fall.

I am finishing up this project in the summer with my lab partner, Aidan Swopes.

We intend to work on other neurotransmitters like dopamine and apply this to other, disorders.

As a mental health advocate, I wanna make mental health more aware, more unstigmatized in the world.

Thank you, I'm sorry.

This is a related topic with what he presented, investigation of protective covers for solar panels and maintenance.

The presentation I just did today is about solar panels, how can we protect them against debris in the orbit, and how can we efficiently clean them.

So we had a NASA project, and we build an experiment equivalent to the orbit for the objects smaller than 10 centimeters.

We have simulated an experiment with a rod that drops from 10 feet, and we tested the solar panels that we have and six materials protective colors.

The best was the polycarbonate, the same as using banks for the active shooter policy.

We kind of anticipated that, but we checked for that to make sure it's the winner.

Essentially, like bulletproof glass, like what you see at a bank.

Bulletproof.

Yes.

So that ended up being also the best thing for solar panel protection in space?

Correct.

Yes.

Do these materials add a lot of weight to the solar panels and therefore cost to the satellites?

Do you have a a solution to that?

That's a very good question.

It's a bit heavy, perhaps the heaviest out of all, but is the one that allows the best solar energy penetrate and be collected by the solar panel.

So you said that you got a grant or a matching grant from NASA to work on this project.

Are they interested in this technology then?

Do think we're gonna see this deployed on satellites in the future?

I hope so.

If they have extra questions, I will gladly answer them.

Okay.

Dr.

Budiman Bunimann, we're back with you again after Energy Horizons.

When we last spoke with you, the Agro PVDome was just a concept that you were first introducing us to.

What I have here is the most typical silicon solar cell.

This is mainstream technology right now.

As you can see, this is wafer thin.

I mean, like, it's actually less than one millimeter.

Even with my hands, this one just splashed into pieces.

So I am also active in OREC, Oregon Renewable Energy Center, and this project was actually a part of the agriculture photovoltaics PV dome.

So we call it AGRO-PV Dome Agriculture needs land, solar PV also needs land and they happen to be the same kind of land that they need.

They need to be a large area, flat, with a lot of sunshine.

So at some point it will be in conflict.

I mean, like, as we build now more and more solar PV farm.

So the idea is to combine them.

The land for agricultural purposes because, well, there is no other choice because we have to put the plan to grow on the land.

But then if we can build some sort of elevated structure on top of it and use solar PV on top of it, then we can get the best of both worlds.

So what we have here is actually what we call lightweight PV and that's what enable us to integrate the PV with the greenhouse and thus you have the land for both agricultural use as well as photovoltaic use.

So I think the last time we met, we were building it.

We had the concept, we had the funding.

We were building it, and it's actually by students of electrical engineering and mechanical engineering.

Yeah.

We saw some groundhog holes.

Yeah.

There's some there's some varmints running around.

I guess I'm gonna let myself roll.

So you built it to be mobile on a trailer here?

Yeah, yup.

It's a very not good picture right now, but I have the picture that have simply because we had the performance monitoring during summer last year.

So at the time it was with all the plants and everything, monitor the performance in terms of the agricultural productivity, that is the plant is growing, it's not inhibited in any way, but at the same time the PV is also performing, producing power, but then since then, well we have harsh winter here, so we didn't maintain this in terms of the plant productivity.

We are still monitoring the power, but here we have the balance of both where you have the power, the renewable energy power production, you also have the productivity of the plants are not affected.

So that's basically the conclusion of our study last year after three months.

In terms of the plant productivity, they are growing just as per normal.

So these solar cells are the same monocrystalline silicon solar cells that you broke in half with?

Oh yes, yes.

Well that seems to be popular.

Yeah, I'm the cell breaking man it is.

Yes, you are.

This agrivoltaics concept is not is not my concept.

It's actually people have been thinking about this the last five, ten years maybe.

This is the first time that I tested this concept in real sunlight, relatively real scale, and the result has been good.

I mean, we are writing up now the report, the manuscript, submit it somewhere soon, and then, yeah, soon enough, we can share this exciting development in a agrifoltaic concept with the wider scientific community as as well as industry community.

I like fundamental thing, but I like fundamental thing that matters either for society or for industry.

So this is obviously maybe for society, for renewable energy movement.

Oregon Tech is a great place.

We've got great students, great faculty, great facilities.

It's fun to be here, and it really just is about students.

It's about students learning.

We really push that polytechnic institution part, so we really want students to get that hands on education.

Dr.

Edwards, thanks so much for the conversation.

Good to meet you.

I think OIT just has so many outstanding students and programs that little do people know about what great things happen here and how brilliant our students are and creative.

The project based learning that's here is outstanding.

Okay.

Thank you so much Cecilia.

Really good talking to you.

Now I like this place because a lot of projects are hands on.

So you have to show, you know, so many photos.

All the presentations have photographs and what you see is what you get, sort of.

Dr.

Andrea, thanks for the conversation.

Interesting stuff.

Higher education at its core is the transition of knowledge and wisdom, experience to the next generation.

And throughout this building, you'll see a very exciting group of students who, when I look at them, it makes me feel better about the future.

And in uncertain times, it's nice to know there's a group of folks here who are doing all they can do to make the world a better place.

Doctor.

Ken Fincher, once again, thank you for having us.

My pleasure, thank you for coming out.

Oh, very cool, this is fantastic.

I'm pretty space happy myself, so I find this pretty fascinating.

Hey.

We're really good to meet you, Andrew.

Yeah.

Nice to meet you.

Really good to meet you, thanks for telling us about it.

Thank you so much, Lacey.

Nice to meet you, thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Very cool research.

Thank you.

Jane, thanks so much.

It's very nice meeting you.

We appreciate you guys coming by.

Absolutely.

I'm very curious about transmission issues.

We do a lot of coverage about energy systems and stuff.

So, yeah, definitely wanted to clue in on it.

Thanks for the conversation, guys.

We appreciate you.

It was really good to meet you all.

Maggie, good to meet you.

Good to Good to meet you, and good to meet you.

Alright.

Instead of having you all spell your names, I have a release for you to sign.

Well, very cool idea.

Yeah.

Really good to meet you.

What was your name again?

Logan.

Once again, really good to meet you.

Yeah.

Nice to meet you.

Thanks for telling me about this.

Yeah.

Love IDEAFest.

It's fun.

Thanks, Taylor.

Really good talking to you.

Dr.

Budiman, this is really interesting stuff.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

I'm so glad that you got this made, congratulations.

Hey, thanks for letting me do it, I really appreciate it.

That was awesome.

Thank you so much for everyone that has supported me for so long and who introduced me to the world of engineering especially.

Thank you.

Hey, thank you, I really appreciate it.

And congratulations.

This is Us As We Are.

Us As We Are is made possible in part by the Roundhouse Foundation, a private family foundation that supports creative solutions to the unique challenges associated with rural culture and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

Additional funding by the Elizabeth C. Peace Memorial Fund for Education and Social Welfare and by the Members of Southern Oregon PBS.

Thank you.