From satellites and spinal surgery to infant health and haptic virtual reality applications, student engineering teams at Rice University demonstrated how hands-on design can drive real-world impact at the 2025 Huff Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) Showcase and competition. Held April 17 at the Ion, the event featured 81 student teams, 93 judges and hundreds of visitors.
After judges and guests explored the projects on view throughout the afternoon, OEDK faculty director Maria Oden opened the awards ceremony by celebrating the scale and scope of this year’s event. She also thanked sponsors for their generous support, including Chevron, Shell and the Rice Engineering Alumni Association (REA). As Oden called out the names of winning teams one by one, celebratory cheers erupted from the densely packed crowd on the Ion forum stairs and ground floor.
This year’s top prize ⎯ the Woods-Leazar Innovation Award for Excellence in Engineering and an associated $5,000 in cash ⎯ went to Thrust But Verify, a team charged with developing a new satellite propulsion module at the behest of Stellar Exploration, a California-based aerospace technology company.
“I think the whole team is just exhilarated,” senior Warren Rose said as he and his fellow team members ⎯ seniors Stefan Budimlic, Anish Chitnis, Mark Lopatofsky, Jack Maurry, Sam Sarver, Daniel Stulski and Liam Waite ⎯ were beset by photographers snapping photos and throngs of people coming up to offer their congratulations. “We put in so much work this last year on this. It’s a project that everyone here has passion for. Everyone here is working in a relevant field or is excited about expanding this type of technology. We now have a product to show we’ve made real progress, and now that Rice has recognized that, I don’t know … I’m beyond words right now.”
Other award-winning teams and projects were:
Cache Kitties team members Prahalad Chari, Dawson Franklin, Natalia Mendiola, Lindsey Russ, Hong-Ye Wang, Benjamin Wilson and Dingding Ye designed a hardware accelerator for machine learning that earned them the first place Excellence in Capstone Engineering Award ($2,000). Their system makes artificial intelligence (AI) computing more scalable and sustainable, offering greater efficiency and speed.
Cushion Queens won the second place Excellence in Capstone Engineering Award ($1,500) as well as the first place Willy Revolution Award for Outstanding Innovation ($3,500) for a textile-based seat cushion for public transit operators. In their project, Eva Montenegro, Emily Pena, Gretchen Schulke, Leticia Souto and Belen Szentes used fluidic logic to deliver mechanotherapy with the goal of mitigating the negative health impact of prolonged sitting for an often-overlooked population that plays a vital role in urban mobility.
A device designed to fix echocardiography catheters in place during heart surgery earned team AnchorCat ⎯ Sumin Jeong, Vivian Lang, Jonathan Makhoul, Alexi Pierre-Louis, Alice Tian and Sam Wu ⎯ the third place Excellence in Capstone Engineering Award ($1,000). Their project promises to reduce complications and improve efficiency for cardiac ablation procedures.
WYYRL Designs designed an infant suction monitor that incorporates sensors, AI and a virtual assistant to support caregivers, especially in low-resource settings. Team members Sandeep Ramlochan, Charissa Wang and Dylan Yoon earned both the Excellence in Freshman Engineering Award($1,000).
The Excellence in Student Organization or Club Award ($1,000) went to Rice Eclipse Rocketry Club – Propulsion Project. Team members Lavinia Barker, Frahanco Deressa, Luis Gaitan, Ilina Goyal, Liam Manley, Henry Prendergast, Daniel Ramirez, Elaine Ren and Ethan Zhang design, build, test and launch rockets, which includes designing and building rocket engines, airframe components, avionics electronics, payloads and more.
Haast Autonomous team members Santiago Brent, Jason Chen and Ege Halac created a long-range, unmanned aircraft to transport organs safely and efficiently, addressing delays in current transplant logistics. Their project earned the Excellence in Independent, Underclassman, Multiyear or Other Engineering Award ($1,000).
The intelligent tumor tracking system designed by Amanda Hudson, Jade Lee, Alexandra McLennan and Ishika Mukherjee, aka AccuraEdge Solutions, won the Excellence in Graduate Engineering Design Award ($1,000). Their project uses AI to improve the accuracy of tumor-removal surgeries by ensuring no cancerous tissue is left behind, reducing the likelihood of recurrence.
PentaPrint and VacuTrac tied for the second place Willy Revolution Award for Outstanding Innovation with each team receiving a $1,500 cash prize. Abigail Bo, Zion Felder, Shifan Liu, Tony Xu, Emily Yao and Yijun Zhou of team PentaPrint created a five-axis 3D printer with custom control systems and slicing software to improve structural strength and versatility in additive manufacturing.
“I’m a senior, but I hadn’t been to any showcases until this year, so this has been very exciting for me personally,” said VacuTrac team member Eleanor Kimbro, who together with teammates Cameron Erber, Sasha Keck, Yeonju Kim, Sophianne Loh and Luke Yuen, designed a combined suction and retraction tool for spinal surgeries, enabling surgeons to reduce procedure time, fatigue and patient risk.
“Our team worked so hard all year with so much time and care that everyone’s put into it, so it was really rewarding to get to finally show our work,” Kimbro said. “We got such great feedback today and met so many interesting people. It’s a really wonderful experience, and I think we just feel proud of the way we were able to show up today.”
Detonation Engine team members Ethan Goore, Connor Greenwell, Amy Kavalewitz, Max Kovalchick, Liam Manley and Jesus Ramos won the Best Interdisciplinary Engineering Design Award ( $750) for a project aiming to advance next-generation rotating detonation engines. Their work supports future propulsion systems for space and aerospace.
The OEDK Staff Favorite Awardand $500 cash prize went to W.R.I.S.T, an acronym for wearable radial interface for sensory technology. Team members Ali Nik-Ahd, Xinghe Chen, Brendan Hlibok, Nathan Morriss, Wendy Tan and Didi Zhou developed a wearable bracelet that provides haptic feedback through vibrations and squeezing to enhance virtual and augmented reality simulations.
“Throughout the entire semester and year, it’s been super fun and super interesting to get to work with all these great engineers,” Nik-Ahd said. “It’s also been challenging, but I’m very happy with the way it turned out.”
FleetCode won Best Aerospace or Transportation Technology Award ($500) for a project aiming to advance autonomous sail fleet operations. Olamide Adeshola, Owen Baenen, Jun Chu, Ilan Ezra, Faith Mulugeta, Daniel Plascencia, Connor Spears, Anna Tetreault and Ithzel Toscano took previous OEDK semiautonomous vessel prototypes to a new level: “It is now time to go small,” the team argued in their project description, which laid plans for the design of a whole fleet of smaller unpiloted vessels that can sail together and are cheaper and faster to manufacture and harder to target than larger vessels.
COINnoisseurs Arjun Kannan, Benjamin Peng, Julian Riley, Adeel Sumar, Noah Villa and Christopher Zhou built a rapid coin recognition system to help banks, collectors and other numismatic enthusiasts identify potentially valuable coins from bulk collections. Their project won Best Conceptual or Computational Engineering Design Award ($500).
TheBest Energy-Related Engineering Design Award($500) went to Rice Wind Energy for their top-in-the-nation wind turbine with in-house generator and variable load system. Raj Anthony, Caesar Coss, Elliot Chae, Izzie Driewer, Esther Fahel, Rachel Kim, Jasmine Klinkao, Amelia Pillar, Sierra Ramlakhan, Adeel Sumar, Adam Swartz, Julian Villamar-Robbins, Ashley Wang, Jason Yang and others are part of an interdisciplinary team of over 40 members from across 15 different majors. The team is headed to the final stage of the Collegiate Wind Competition, which will take place next month at the CLEANPOWER 2025 Conference and Exhibition in Phoenix.
“Our team’s worked really hard,” Driewer said. We’ve grown a lot since last year ⎯ we’ve come a long way.”
LHO Water Associates Caroline Hashimoto, Lily Lee and Kyle Olcott won Best Environment and Sustainability Engineering Design Award ($500) for a project tackling high-risk flooding assessment and mitigation in the McCoy Creek-Guadalupe River Watershed in Texas’ DeWitt and Gonzalez Counties.
John Altman, Sara Elliott, Christian Fox, Khalil JeBailey, Noe Martinez and Fred Mungai built a precision powder feeder for cold spray metal printing, enabling the creation of stronger alloys for aerospace and defense uses. The team, known as Powder Peddlers, won the Best Gaming, Creative or Innovative Technology Award ($500).
A drug delivery balloon deployment system for treating peripheral arterial disease earned team PlaqueATAC ⎯ Daniel Orion Bacuyag, Brian Bishara, Emma Kirchhoff, Samantha Lydon, Joseph Quinlan and Alice Zhou ⎯ the Best Medical Device Technology Award ($500).
As part of team DialySafe, Ibrahim Al-Akash, Marc De Guzman, Shereena Johnson, Leora Maksoud and Vedha Penmetcha created a safer, easier-to-use system for peritoneal dialysis focused on improving at-home care for patients, especially children suffering from end-stage kidney disease. The project won the Best Technology for Low-Resource Settings Award ($500).
The annual showcase is a rite of passage for engineering design students who spend countless hours throughout the academic year at the OEDK, a 20,000-square-foot facility equipped with design tools, prototyping equipment, meeting rooms and designated work benches. Over the past academic year, the OEDK supported more than 1,200 student users, 27 courses and 131 teams or clubs. Projects represented all nine departments of Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing as well as contributions from across campus.
“The showcase is an amazing opportunity for students to show off the work that they have done over the course of a semester or a year,” Oden said. “I could not be more proud of these students. They have accomplished so much, and their creativity and hard work was on full display here today.”
For some students, excitement gave way to disappointment as they failed to hear their team’s name called out. But for most, the more enduring takeaway would likely be a sense of accomplishment and personal growth. REA president and alumnus Theodore A. Adams III ’86 called upon students to take a moment to acknowledge their journey of discovery and commit the festive occasion to memory.
“Look around, breathe it in,” Adams said. “When you look back on this day, it’s going to bring back memories that are just going to overwhelm you. It’s going to be amazing. So don’t just let it just skip away. Take a moment to really appreciate your friends, the people that have brought you here, your teachers, your mentors.”