Innovations in Engineering, Science, and Math: Rose-Hulman Capstone Projects

Throughout their four years on campus, Rose-Hulman students accumulate nuggets of knowledge, creating their own road maps to discovery. The culmination of their education, the Rose Show, represents the crux of curiosity and the pinnacle of problem-solving, and 2026 capstone and Rose Show projects pushed the definition of invention.
   

PCB Foundry

Multidisciplinary Design
DJ Bernard, Prabhat Vadlamani, Django Wardlow, Colin Young

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are critical to the creation and functioning of nearly every electronic device, including cell phones and smart watches, but custom PCBs often need to be ordered from third-party manufacturers, potentially causing significant delays. Frustrated by this process, DJ Bernard, Prabhat Vadlamani, Django Wardlow, and Colin Young developed PCB Foundry, a benchtop manufacturing process designed to produce four-layer PCBs in a single workday using a five-step process. By enabling in-house fabrication, the system eliminates two-week shipping delays from overseas outsourcing, accelerating rapid prototyping for engineers.

"We hope to pursue this after college and continue to build PCBs and bring this to market eventually as part of our own startup," said Vadlamani, a 2026 mechanical engineering and engineering design graduate.

   

Virtual Reality Environment for Brain-Computer Interface

Computer Science & Software Engineering
Brian Beasley, Garrett Doolittle, Jared Kagay, Jacob Van Dyke

Developed to advance the neuroprosthetic research of Samuel F. Hulbert Endowed Chair and Professor of Biology & Biomedical Engineering Alan Chiu, PhD, this high-fidelity virtual reality environment leverages the Unity Engine and Varjo hardware to investigate how visual feedback impacts reaching motion accuracy.

Brain-computer interfaces connect the brain's electrical signals to an external monitoring device. The system immerses subjects in customizable reaching tasks while seamlessly synchronizing precise three-dimensional motion data with an integrated brain-computer interface and electroencephalogram headset. By enabling researchers to intuitively modify trial parameters and providing immediate data visualization and analysis, the software streamlines experimental workflows for future studies.

  

Unlayered 3D

Multidisciplinary Design
Philip Pounds, Alex Stedman, Alex Yim

Every 3D printing enthusiast has spent countless hours of their lives carefully scraping away plastic supports — a process thought to be a necessary annoyance of the industry — risking personal injury or print damage while wasting plastic material. 2026 graduates Philip Pounds, Alex Stedman, and Alex Yim launched their capstone project, Unlayered 3D, into a startup designed to reduce these frustrations. Unlayered 3D revolutionizes 3D printing, using five axes to print unconventionally shaped objects without plastic supports.

"The overarching North Star of the company is to build the best, most automated 3D printers that can manufacture basically anything," said Pounds.

Though they 3D print without supports, the team has appreciated plenty of entrepreneurial support throughout their Rose-Hulman journeys, successfully pitching for and earning funding from alumni investors at the annual Sawmill Society weekend twice.

Their efforts earned them the William A. Kline Innovation Award, honoring Rose-Hulman's late dean of innovation, at the 2026 Rose Show.

Read more about Unlayered 3D's layers of success.

Mechanical Engineering
Kolby Cockett-Nagamine, Andrew Leonard, Tim Swicord, Owen Wiesler, Max Wilking

For their capstone project, a team of mechanical engineering graduates developed a heat exchanger for a hobby turbojet engine and competed in the Aerospace Propulsion Outreach Program, hosted by the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the competition, the team was honored with the Best Newcomer Award.

Jet engines produce thrust and heat via the Brayton cycle, and, in aircraft, a portion of the compressor stage air is bled off and utilized in systems such as cabin pressurization and anti-icing. The team's air-to-air heat exchanger captured energy from the hot compressor air, evaluating the cold air mass flow rate and surface area for the best heat transfer.

"In a practical application, this is used for when you sit on a plane and turn on the air," explained 2026 mechanical engineering graduate Max Wilking. "That air is coming from the atmosphere. You need a way to heat that up."

Read more about the team and the competition.

     

Common Mode Filtering Applied to Data Transmission Structures

Electrical & Computer Engineering
Cami Lovelace, Rebecca Testa, Jacob Fields, Yejia Hao

  
Differential signaling is a method commonly used to transmit data at high speeds and with high signal integrity. Unfortunately, this method is highly susceptible to common mode noise, which can degrade the signal quality and increase data errors in large systems. This project aims to develop filtering structures for PCIe 5.0 (Gen 5) devices operating at 16GHz, attenuating common mode noise while allowing the desired differential mode signal to pass.

   
Resolve Verifying Compiler

Computer Science & Software Engineering
Nicco Scanu, Chris Lardner, Carson Holscher, Brian Pascente

The RESOLVE Verifying Compiler is a compiler designed not only to compile code but to mathematically prove that it works as intended. This ensures that no valid input to a program can lead to an unexpected output. This type of compiler would be applicable for critical system projects such as banking or spacecraft navigation systems processes where any margin of error could lead to severe consequences.

   
  

Formula Society of Automotive Engineers Electric Vehicle Battery Management System Firmware Development

Electrical & Computer Engineering
Braden Blanford, Henry Jung, Eric Soo-Yoshimura, Yicheng Zhu

Formula SAE (FSAE) is a prestigious engineering competition through which university students design, manufacture, and race small-scale Formula-style open wheel racecars. The competition includes three "static" events: cost judging, design judging, and business case judging. It also includes five "dynamic" events: acceleration, skidpad, autocross, endurance, and fuel economy. Rose Grand Prix Engineering (RoseGPE), Rose-Hulman's FSAE team, converted their internal combustion vehicle to an entirely electric car this year, and this project supported critical firmware for the battery management system.

Read more about RoseGPE's first electric vehicle.

      

Confidence Distributions and Bootstrapping p-Values

Mathematics
Jacob Gerber

The two predominant schools of thought within the field of statistics are those of the Frequentists and the Bayesians. The formalization of the term "confidence" provides an approach to inference that lies between these dialectical philosophies. Confidence distributions lie at the forefront of this approach. These "frequentist distribution estimators" contain p-values for a range of hypotheses and can be approximated directly by a bootstrap distribution. This direct approach is an alternative to the current standard of enforcing the null hypothesis before bootstrap resampling to obtain p-values.

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Radial Piston Air Compressor for Compact, High-Flow Mobile Applications

Mechanical Engineering
Marcus Ludwig, Ian Rose, Ben Egelseer

This team developed a radial piston air compressor designed to improve flow rate, compactness, and operational flexibility compared to traditional inline compressors. By arranging multiple pistons radially, the design increases CFM output while reducing overall size and vibration. Key challenges for the team included lubrication strategy, precision manufacturing, and thermal management. The team built and tested a functional prototype, evaluating pressure, flow rate, efficiency, and durability and comparing experimental results to theoretical predictions.

"We're looking into patenting it," said 2026 mechanical engineering graduate Ian Rose.

Learn more about the Rose Show and past projects here.

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