From potato chips to catheter tips, VCU College of Engineering students show off their creative solutions
The VCU College of Engineering’s 2025 Capstone Design Expo showcased over 90 inventive projects by senior and multidisciplinary student teams, all focused on solving practical, real-world challenges.
Awarded with the People’s Choice Award, students Kyia Hill, Elna Manoj, Valentina Santos Agreda and Rachel Scardina, with instructor Henry Donahue, Ph.D., showcased their prosthetic finger and specialized glove for a veteran golfer with an amputated index finger. Combating grip instability and painful vibrations when golfing, the biomedical engineering team’s glove’s padding reduced vibrations and featured an opening that allows direct contact of the prosthetic with the residual limb. The team also modified the golf club, and it used oscillation testing and an accelerometer to measure shaft frequencies and vibration.
Awarded with the Excellence in Design award, students AJ Critz, Craig Lyle, Joseph Lee and Chris Treblic, with instructor Da-ren Chen, Ph.D., developed a naval defense technology dynamometer for the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Dahlgren Division, streamlining testing and reducing the need for expensive at-sea simulations. This Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering team solved the Dahlgren Division’s bottleneck in capacity, durability and usability by designing a dynamometer that can handle more horsepower and operate reliably in high radio-frequency environments, allowing for fast swaps of outboard motors.
The first place Excellence in Design award was given to students Josiah Dieffenbach, Ian Gildea, Jaden Casey and Cedric Wilson, with instructor Gennady Miloshevsky, Ph.D. for a device that improves speed and safety of producing potato chips. The mechanical and nuclear engineering project team designed a pneumatic potato-halving device that automatically cuts oversized potatoes into manageable halves, improving the speed and safety of the current process.
Symposiums this week showcase how students are rising stars in VCU’s vibrant research community
VCU's Research Weeks 2025 highlighted the university's commitment to discovery with two major student showcases: the 28th annual Graduate Student Research Symposium and the 17th annual Poster Symposium for Undergraduate Research.
These events displayed the impressive breadth of academic work across campus. The undergraduate event featured presentations from almost 300 students, while the graduate symposium included work from over 100 students.
The symposiums collectively demonstrated the vibrant research community at VCU, with projects ranging from environmental concerns and urban design to critical advancements in human health treatments and innovative solutions for industrial processes. The presentations affirmed that obstacles are an inherent and valuable part of the research process, which is vital for improving as a scholar.
VCU research remains strong, growing – and ‘above all’ impactful, VP Rao says in annual address
Research is a cornerstone of Virginia Commonwealth University, from internationally recognized breakthroughs to undergraduate classroom projects. P. Srirama Rao, Ph.D., VCU’s vice president for research and innovation, delivered the 2025 State of the Research address, outlining a compelling need for the advancement of VCU’s results-driven research enterprise amid current challenges to federal research funding. “This is not the time to slow down, but to continue and double down on what we are doing,” declared Rao.
“The work that we do here matters, because it doesn’t just stay in the classrooms or the laboratories,” he said. “The scientific advances in all fields, including arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering and medicine, go to places where they matter the most – the communities we serve – locally, nationally and globally.”