DeXcellence wins Engineering Design Showcase

The winning DeXcellence team, from left: Shaurya Agarwal, Allison Garza, Sonia Garcia, Vivaswath Kumar and Andrew Schober. Photo by An Le/Luxe Studio Productions

DeXcellence won the $5,000 top prize, the Excellence in Engineering Design Award, for its motion-capture device for cerebral palsy patients at the George R. Brown School of Engineering Design Showcase and Poster Competition April 17 at Tudor Fieldhouse.

The team members are electrical engineering major Vivaswath Kumar, bioengineering major Sonia Garcia, mechanical engineering majors Allison Garza and Shaurya Agarwal and bioengineering and computational and applied math major Andrew Schober.

“This is a testament to how much we’ve gotten from the engineering program, guys like (team advisers) Dr. (Gary) Woods, Dr. (Eric) Richardson, and all the help from Shriners Hospital,” Kumar said. “Capping off our engineering degree with this win is very special to us.”

“We also really have a passion for our project for helping kids,” Garcia added. “Who doesn’t like helping kids?”

For the first time this year, the showcase featured the presentation of the Willy Revolution Award for Innovation in Engineering Design, which went to White Mirror.

The award was founded by the Rice alumni who carried out the university’s most famous jack in 1988 when they turned the statue of William Marsh Rice 180 degrees.

The annual public event put on by the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen features senior capstone design and other projects by Rice undergraduates. Read about all the participating teams here.

--Mike Williams