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Our Projects

Our Projects

View the links below to learn more about each of our current projects.

Posters for each project from our annual Symposium can be found here. 

The ALS Alert System

ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a condition which results in loss of voluntary control of muscles and, in later stages, an inability to speak. The goal of this project is to develop, in collaboration with the Greater Philadelphia chapter of the ALS Association, a low-cost eye-triggered alert system for persons with ALS to communicate a need for assistance when their caregivers are not nearby.

Project Manager:  Philip Graybill                                 Student Project Manager: David Brink

Approximately 90 million people in Africa lack access to safe drinking water, despite having water infrastructure installed in their community. The Better Pumps team of the Collaboratory provides engineering support for partners working to sustain reliable water infrastructure for everyone. The team tests improvements to the Afridev and India Mark II hand pumps, two of the most common pumps installed.   

Project Manager: David Vader                                       Student Project Manager: Andrea Hunsberger

Email: dvader@messiah.edu                                         Symposium Poster

The Bridge team will work with Forward Edge to design a bridge to connect a school and access road on the other side of a waterway in Oaxaca Mexico. 

Project Manager: Brian Swartz                         Student Project Manager: Noah Thrush

Email: bswartz@messiah.edu                           Symposium Poster                                                    

 

As part of the global effort to increase access to safe and affordable drinking water, the Clean Accessible Water Solutions team designs and installs water treatment systems to provide communities with the cleanest water they can sustainably afford. The team is currently partnering with Tree 4 Life in Guatemala.

Project Manager: Michelle Lockwood                    Student Project Manager: Liv Allbee

Email: mlockwood@messiah.edu                          Symposium Poster - previous project

Video is for a previous iteration of this group, formerly called VWOS

The Coffee Process Water Treatment Team (CPWT) project is partnering with Jarrod Brown, president of Mission Lazarus in Honduras to find coffee processing waste treatment solutions for San Lázaro Coffee. San Lázaro Coffee is a specialty grade coffee company that employs women in Honduras with fair wages. The team will design and test a waste treatment process that is economical and environmentally sustainable.

Project Manager: Thomas Soerens                          Student Project Manager: Benjamin Gates

Email: tsoerens@messiah.edu

The Cunningham Clubfoot Brace team is working to adapt a novel clubfoot brace to reduce production costs through locally sustainable designs and 3D printing. The Cunningham brace utilizes a unilateral helix, which offers a more comfortable, dynamic alternative to the standard clubfoot brace treatment known as “boots and bar.” The team is partnering with HopeWalks, CURE International and Jerald Cunningham, to use biomedical engineering principles to validate the efficacy of the brace.

Project Manager: Camilo Giraldo                        Student Project Manager: Brittney Fouse

Email: cgiraldo@messiah.edu                         Symposium Poster

The Diagnostics for Viral Diseases Project is partnered with Dr. Phil Thuma at the Macha Research Trust located in Macha, Zambia in order to create a novel diagnostic method for HIV. This method is being designed specifically for the clinicians in the hospital to have a sustainable, low-cost diagnostic tool that provides information on whether or not to change antiretroviral treatments for patients with HIV.

Project Manager: Randy Fish     Student Project Manager: Ryan Oyler

Email: rfish@messiah.edu          Symposium Poster

As part of the global effort to increase access to safe and affordable drinking water, the Drinking Water Innovative Purification team designs and installs water treatment systems to provide communities with the cleanest water they can sustainably afford. The team is currently partnering with Forward Edge International in Kijabe, Kenya.

Project Manager: Michelle Lockwood                Student Project Manager: Ruth Galyen

Email: mlockwood@messiah.edu                      Symposium Poster - previous project

Video is for a previous iteration of this group, formerly called VWOS

Partnering with the Brethren in Christ Church in Zambia, the Egg Incubator team is seeking to serve the church by helping increase food security and provide a sustainable supplemental income source. The Nahumba Mission in Choma, Zambia has about 150 chickens that produce a steady supply of fertilized eggs, but few incubators are available. The goal is to design a high-quality, low-cost device that local pastors can use to hatch chicks to sell.

Project Manager: Philip Tan                                  Student Project Manager: Josh Mah

Email: ptan@messiah.edu                                    Symposium Poster

The Energy Monitoring and Management System team provides meters for monitoring energy use, particularly for people with limited supplies of energy. These meters can limit power use to prevent outages while educating users about their energy use habits with the ultimate goal of making electrical power more available to energy impoverished regions of the world. This team is partnering with Open Door Development, Theological College of Zimbabwe and IEEE Smart Village.  www.messiah.edu/emms

Project Manager: Tom Austin                Student Project Managers: Caitlin Ross

Email: tom@austinlight.com                 Symposium Poster

The Fluency Assistive Device project is supporting and improving an electronic device that greatly aids a person with a fluency disorder by masking the user's own auditory feedback. This team is supporting local technician, David Germeyer.

Project Manager: Harold Underwood                  Student Project Manager: Jake Finkbeiner

Email: hunderw@messiah.edu                            Symposium Poster

Cerebrovascular disease refers to several conditions related to restriction in blood flow to the brain which may then lead to stroke.  This, in turn, may result in the inability to walk without some form of assistance.  The goal of the Functional Electrical Stimulation project is to research functional electrical stimulation (FES) technology and design/build a low-cost prototype as an effective intervention for improving gait post stroke.

Project Manager: Ryan Farris                           Student Project Manager: Timothy Lee

Email: rfarris@messiah.edu                              Symposium Poster

The Intelligent Water Project will improve access to clean water in rural African communities through a partnership with World Vision,  SIM and AlignedWorks by increasing hand pump performance and reliability, while also reducing the resources needed for repair. This is achieved through a remote monitoring system installed on the community hand pump which utilizes sensors, an embedded microprocessor and mobile phone, and cloud technology to create a comprehensive, real-time database providing information on pump use and needed maintenance.

Project Manager: Randy Fish                                Student Project Manager: Jared Groff

Email: rfish@messiah.edu

The marketing team uses social media, graphic design, writing, and film to promote the Collaboratory and provide updates about the organization.

Project Manager: Alyssa Heberlig and Alison Johnson            Student Project Managers: Jenna O'Connell

Email: aheberlig@messiah.edu

The Modular Mobility project partners with the Center of Hope in Burkina Faso to provide hand-powered and electric tricycles as a means of personal transportation for those with limited mobility. Short-term, the goals are to maximize the cost-effectiveness and manufacturability of the current design and to equip a local fabricator in Burkina Faso to sustainably produce and distribute tricycles. Long-term, the goal is to develop a turn-key business model that puts local fabricators to work.

Project Manager: David Vader                            Student Project Manager: Joseph Sinsel

Email: dvader@messiah.edu                              Symposium Poster (Sustainable Mobility - Previous Iteration)

This team is partnered with International Nepal Fellowship (INF), a Christian, medical organization that manages a hospital in Pokhara, Nepal and specializes in patients with spinal cord injuries. For these patients, a prone trolley is used to allow them to regain mobility and accelerate recovery. With a prone trolley, the patient lies face down and uses their arms to propel the trolley. The Prone Trolley Team aims to provide INF with a practical design that can be locally manufactured.

Project Manager: Tim Van Dyke                                 Student Project Manager: Connor Welch

Email: tvandyke@messiah.edu                                  Symposium Poster

Persons with disabilities in developing countries often lack the basic equipment needed to assist them in their daily lives. International Nepal Fellowship (INF) is a Christian medical organization in Nepal providing assistance to people with disabilities and other conditions. INF has expressed a desire for a wheelchair that is designed specifically for the challenges of Nepal and would be able to be made from local materials.

Project Manager: Tim Van Dyke                       Student Project Manager: Joshua Holley

Email: tvandyke@messiah.edu                        Symposium Poster

The Prosthetic Knee team is partnered with the CURE International Hospital in Kijabe, Kenya, to explore avenues in which the orthopedic workshop would be able to manufacture and provide a low-cost prosthetic knee for through-knee and trans-femoral amputees. While the hospital has commercially made knees available, a lower price point and the ability to fabricate a prosthetic knee in-country would open up an additional option for patients who would otherwise not be able to afford a prosthetic.

Project Manager: Jamie Williams                               Student Project Manager: Nate Jaloszynski

Email: jwilliams@messiah.edu                                  Symposium Poster

The Rapid Orthotics for CURE Kenya (ROCK) team is partnering with Cure International’s hospital in Kijabe, Kenya to implement and maintain a 3D printing system for the manufacturing of orthotic braces and prosthetic sockets. Furthermore, the team is in the process of safety-testing 3D printed prosthetics that will eventually be manufactured by the local orthotist technicians in Kenya.

                                                                                                     

Project Manager: Jamie Williams                     Student Project Manager: Rachel Bruns

Email: jwilliams@messiah.edu                         Symposium Poster                                      

The SkinSafe Project is working to provide documented research on the correlation between lack of access to clean water and bacterial growth and skin breakdown at the interface between a prosthetic device and the residual limb. This research will allow us to help patients who wear a prosthesis in low-resource settings. 

Project Manager: Philip Tan                                                    Student Project Manager: Keera Dupler

Email:ptan@messiah.edu                                                       Symposium Poster

The Solar PV team is designing a solar power system for an orphanage associated with Tree 4 Hope in Guatemala. The team is also working on completing a solar lab at Messiah University to help test designs and train current and future team members.

Project Manager: Harold Underwood                             Student Project Manager: Micah Clarke

Email: hunderw@messiah.edu                                       Symposium Poster

Cerebrovascular disease refers to several conditions related to restriction in blood flow to the brain which may then lead to stroke.  This, in turn, may result in the inability to walk without some form of assistance, and to the need for knee-ankle-foot orthoses (KAFOs).  The goal of the Stance Control Orthotic project is to research, design and prototype a 3Dprintable stance-control knee orthosis (SC-KO) with an any-angle locking mechanism. 

Project Manager: Ryan Farris                             Student Project Manager: Jordan Witt

Email: rfarris@messiah.edu                                Symposium Poster