Digital Commons Network^™

Design Framework For Polymer Gel Treatments From A Database Of Field Projects, Baojun Bai, Munqith Aldhaheri, Mingzhen Wei

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study compiles and analyzes data from over 125 published field projects around the world, covering nearly 900 treated wells. Building on those detailed studies, this paper distills the most important findings into a concise, practical, and actionable framework to guide where in-situ gel treatments should be applied, how they should be designed, and how their outcomes can be evaluated. The proposed workflow guides engineers through five integrated stages: screening appropriate gel types, designing formulation and injection strategies, predicting field response, evaluating treatment performance, and conducting iterative refinement with feedback loops to adjust designs based on observed outcomes. The framework …

Adaptive Design Strategies For A Dual-Shaft Pvc Shredder, Gavin Balderas

University Honors Theses

This capstone project involved the design and development of a mid-size plastic shredder, created to process strong, ductile PVC sheets up to ½" thick. This application falls between the capabilities of consumer grade plastic shredders and heavy-duty industrial machines. Over 400 million tons of plastic produced annually and less than 10% of it is recycled; there is an ever-growing need for plastic recycling accessibility and infrastructure. This project aimed to create a compact dual-shaft shredder that can shred thick PVC sheets while being powered by a 120V outlet. Research into blade geometry and orientations aided an iterative design process driven …

Jalzap: An Agile Hybrid For Ai-Accelerated Software Development, Pouya Nouri

University Honors Theses

The rapid adoption of generative AI tools allows software teams to quickly code applications, but it comes at a cost: high scope volatility, technical debt, and unrealistic expectations, which break traditional Agile frameworks. This thesis introduces JALZAP, a lightweight, hybrid Agile framework designed to serve small, high-agility teams facing compressed timelines and unpredictable schedules. This framework was evaluated over 16 weeks through a Portland State University Capstone project working for a pre-seed startup sponsor, where a six-person team built Flowmind: an AI-powered iOS task management app meant to serve users with neurodevelopmental disorders like ADD/ADHD. JALZAP implements structural boundaries, including …

Evaluating The Impact Of Early Contractor Involvement On Enhancing The Performance Of Construction Projects In Egypt, Samah Saleh Abdelraof, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman, Lamees Mostafa Ahmed

Mansoura Engineering Journal

The construction industry constitutes a critical pillar of Egypt’s national economic growth and sustainable development. Despite its strategic importance, the sector continues to face persistent challenges, including chronic cost overruns, schedule delays, and inadequate coordination among stakeholders. These inefficiencies are largely attributed to the dominance of the traditional Design–Bid–Build (DBB) system, which enforces a rigid separation between design and construction, fostering adversarial relationships and project disputes, which highlights the need for alternative procurement approaches. This research investigates the impact of Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) as a collaborative procurement alternative to enhance project performance. Case studies show that ECI improves early-stage …

Universal Communications Module: Converting Ieee2030.5 Xml Files To Ansi/Cta-2045, Wyatt Bilodeaux

University Honors Theses

The goal of this thesis is to discuss the method and organization of the Universal Communication module capstone project. This project was part of the Portland State University Electrical engineering degree program. While this thesis is part of the University honors curriculum. This thesis goes into detail about team structure and how a 9 person engineering capstone project was managed and organized. It looks at how we broke down the project into sections to be able to properly distribute our resources. This was one of the earliest and most important challenges that this capstone team had to tackle. This was …

Rapid-Prototyping Nanofabrication: Lcd-Based Projection Lithography And Physical Vapor Deposition, Sabeel Saleem Mohammmed

University Honors Theses

The semiconductor industry's continued growth, driven in large part by demand for artificial intelligence hardware, has highlighted the need for greater workforce development in regions adjacent to major fabrication centers like Oregon's Silicon Forest. This capstone project lays the groundwork for a small scale and student led semiconductor fabrication lab at Portland State University by demonstrating two of the core steps in chip manufacturing: photolithography and thin film deposition. Rather than relying on conventional fixed reticles, this work explores a unique, low cost approach to patterning that uses an ultraviolet-compatible liquid crystal display (LCD) as a programmable reticle, allowing arbitrary …

Scalable Flat In-Plane-Motion Mechanical Springs (Sfims) Force Vs Displacement Data, Jared Hunter, Larry L. Howell

ScholarsArchive Data

Force versus displacement data is captured in CSV files for five configurations of Scalable, Flat, In-Plane Motion Mechanical Springs (SFIMS). The five configurations are the Folded Beam Suspension, the Chevron, the Interlaced Chevron, the Canted Triple Folded Beam Suspension, and a Variable Stiffness SFIMS.

A Computational Micropatterning Approach To Study Caveolae And Protein Localization In Vascular Biology, Andrew B. Grespin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Caveolae are specialized, flask-shaped membrane invaginations highly expressed in endothelium and dysregulated in atherosclerosis. Caveolae play a central role in buffering membrane tension, yet the principles governing their spatial organization remain elusive. Thus, we sought to generate the most comprehensive and systematic analysis of blood vessel caveolar spatial organization. However, cell culturing, the backbone of human-focused biological research, does not standardly do well to model physiologically relevant cell behaviors such as migration or polarity-based tissue formation, particularly for punctate proteins and structures like caveolae. Micropatterns are cell-adhesive shapes that biophysically confine cell(s) to a user defined geometry which stereotype organelle …

Chatbot-Based Feedback + Revision And Reflection For Lab Reports, Janie Brennan

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students will upload draft versions of laboratory reports to a specially designed chatbot trained on course guidelines and instructor preferences. The chatbot gives structured feedback on the submission, and then students update their work and write a reflection about the experience.

Oriented Electrospun Fibers Of Poly(Pro-Curcumin/Peg) Sequester Reactive Oxygen Species And Promote The Growth Of Schwann Cells, Jack W. Devlin, Payton R. O'Connor, Conrad H. Cheung, John T. Leman, Martin Oudega, Edmund F. Palermo, Ryan J. Gilbert

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the biological injury microenvironment, pathologically elevated oxidative stress hinders healthy cell migration. Aligned electrospun fibers are used as tissue engineering scaffolds to support and guide the directionality of cell migration. The ability of cells in the central nervous system to sequester and quench reactive oxygen species is limited, and most electrospun fibers do not exert any antioxidant activity on contact. Thus, the challenge remains in designing a scaffold that can both guide cells to the injury site as well as sequester and quench excess free radicals, allowing cells to thrive and potentially regenerate. Curcumin is a well-known, potent antioxidant, …

Bouillean - Ai Recipe Model, George Mouratoff, Hanol Yang, Helen Wang, Sebastian Verbinski

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

AI generated food recipes are the second most desired AI innovation, however relatively few commercial systems exist to fill this niche. This is because while the solution is highly desired, cooking shouldn’t be approached with the same method by most LLMs and standard AIs. The leading models struggle to solve the issue of generating a semantically clear recipe while maintaining memory of the recipe status between steps. This is before we can even attempt to solve the flavor problem.

Cooking represents a unique challenge for AI, since it requires minimal loss in memory alongside already high quality text generation making …

A Parallelized Multi-Component Radiation Testing Methodology For Systems-On-Chip, Weston M. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

As the space industry expands, there is an increased reliance on system on chip (SoC) devices in high radiation environments. The reliability of these devices becomes crucial, especially in space applications. The industry's rapid growth has led to a massive expansion in the use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components. Electronic systems are vulnerable to single event upsets (SEUs) and the failure modes caused by SEUs are not fully understood, especially for COTS SoCs. Standard radiation testing techniques of SEUs use a single core of a multi-core processor to monitor bit flips. In this work, we present a parallelized radiation testing …

Developing Custom High Resolution 3d Printers For Microfluidic Device Fabrication, Dallin Scott Miner

Theses and Dissertations

The advancement of microfluidics in biomedical diagnostics and lab-on-a-chip systems is increasingly dependent on the ability to fabricate complex, three-dimensional architectures with high-resolution negative features. While Digital Light Processing Stereolithography (DLP-SLA) has emerged as a leading fabrication method, it remains constrained by a fundamental trade-off between feature resolution and build volume, as well as challenges regarding fabrication consistency and design accessibility. This dissertation presents an integrated ecosystem of hardware, materials, and software designed to overcome these barriers and enable scalable, high-resolution microfluidic fabrication. We first introduce a novel multi-resolution 3D printing technique utilizing a dual-optical engine architecture, comprising a Very …

Evaluating C-Band Scatterometer Images For Estimating Deforestation In The Amazon Rainforest, Alex Mcbride

Theses and Dissertations

Satellite-based active microwave sensors have been successfully employed for a wide range of vegetation and soil studies. Spaceborne microwave instruments have proven particularly useful for wide-scale monitoring of the vegetation, especially under conditions that limit the effectiveness of high-resolution optical sensors. Satellite scatterometry can be used to detect and model deforestation in the Amazon rainforest by correlating changes in the C-band backscatter data to observed changes in vegetation coverage. The exploratory methodology developed in this paper applies the longest continuous microwave satellite record to the problem of deforestation. The backscatter measurements taken by the ERS and ASCAT missions provide more …

Educational Smart Ai Multi-Functional Robot, Chengxu Tang, Jiayan Wen, Bill Zhang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Over the past decade, advances in embedded computing, robotics frameworks, and AI have significantly lowered the barrier to developing intelligent robotic systems. Some single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi are now capable of running operating systems like Ubuntu and frameworks such as ROS2, allowing us to build robots that can perform tasks including autonomous navigation, computer vision, sensor fusion, and speech interaction. As a result, technologies that were once limited to large research labs are becoming increasingly accessible in educational and lower level research environments.

At the same time, recent developments in AI have changed expectations for how …

A Peer Evaluation Of Safety At Signalized Intersections, Auzton Mitchell Stutts

Theses and Dissertations

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has made significant efforts to reduce crashes at signalized intersections and is constantly seeking to improve safety across the state. The purpose of this research is to quantify and evaluate the safety rates and frequencies at signalized intersections in Utah compared to other states. Once the crashes have been quantified, the secondary purpose is to determine why there may or may not be differences. A survey was developed to understand how states analyze, prioritize, and implement safety at signalized intersections, including different policies, procedures, and countermeasures. Crash data from eight states were analyzed and …

Enhanced Uav Surveillance With Rf-Based Drone Identification Using Transfer Learning, Prajoy Podder, Maciej Jan Zawodniok, Sanjay Madria

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

With the development of technology and the decrease in costs, drones are now becoming easily accessible to the public. As the accessibility of this technology continues to grow, the concerns of security and surveillance increase, and to ensure a sense of security, the need to have reliable drone detection and identification systems is more urgent than ever. Besides, many civilian applications have been found for drones, which play a huge role in modern security and warfare. Unauthorized drones can be very dangerous regarding security issues, as they can be used for spying, smuggling, or even attacks against critical infrastructure. We …

Adopting Critical Power Grid Infrastructure Technologies: An Organizational Cybersecurity Assessment Against Ransomware, Fayez Alsoubaie

Dissertations and Theses

For many years, researchers and practitioners have studied emerging technologies in field of energy production and distribution. Power grid systems carry major weights in the energy branch of the economy. Researchers and scientists have been interested in finding ways to connect the power grid gap and improve protection for its technologies.

The research supports organizational adoption and prioritization of critical cybersecurity technologies for ransomware protection in power grid infrastructure. As utilities increasingly integrate digital technologies, they become more vulnerable to sophisticated cyberattacks that can disrupt services and put public safety at risk. The main focus of the study is to …

Applications Of Geosynthetics In Tunnels Construction: A Sustainable Approach To Carbon Footprint Reduction, Ibraheem Rais, Abdullah H. Alsabhan, Md. Rehan Sadique, Shamshad Alam

Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies

The use of geosynthetics has transformed tunnelling practices by enhancing structural integrity, durability, and environmental sustainability. This review adopts a systematic literature review design, covering publications from 2000 to 2025 sourced from Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar. The selected studies were screened based on relevance, quality, and focus on tunnelling applications, then thematically analyzed into four domains: geosynthetic types, applications, sustainability, and performance evaluation. This review focuses on the applications of various geosynthetics, including geotextiles, geogrids, geocomposites, geocells, and geomembranes, in tunnelling projects. These materials play crucial roles in reinforcing tunnel walls and slopes, improving load distribution, …

Design Of Precise Hinges For Optical Space Arrays, Jacob Sutton

Theses and Dissertations

Deployable origami-based arrays offer significant advantages for space optical systems due to their ability to stow compactly and deploy to a large surface area. However, achieving the panel alignment precision required for optical applications remains an open challenge, particularly for non-rigid-foldable patterns such as the flasher, where large relative motion during deployment and geometric constraints at panel interfaces limit the effectiveness of traditional hinge designs. This thesis addresses the precision alignment challenge through the design, prototyping, and experimental testing of novel passive precision hinges for rigid-panel origami-based deployable space arrays. A compact kinematic coupling hinge incorporating Lamina Emergent Torsional (LET) …

Development Of A Low-Cost Roadside Monitoring System For Identifying High-Emitting Heavy-Duty Trucks, Spencer Larson

Theses and Dissertations

This project investigated the feasibility of using low-cost sensors to identify high-emitting heavy-duty diesel trucks through roadside emissions monitoring. A sampling system was designed and tested in both laboratory and field environments to evaluate sensor performance and measurement reliability. In the laboratory, controlled engine testing enabled direct comparison between low-cost sensors and research-grade instruments to establish baseline accuracy, response time, and sources of uncertainty. These tests demonstrated that while low-cost sensors exhibit greater bias and slower response, several are capable of detecting transient emission events. Field deployments revealed that real-world conditions, such as plume dilution, spatial variability, and short exposure …

Ml Models For Child-Parent Speech Diarization, Kenneth Kang

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

This senior design thesis presents a machine learning research pipeline for child-parent and child-directed speech diarization. Speech diarization is the task of determining who spoke and when in an audio recording. Although this problem is well studied in adult meeting, broadcast, and conversational speech, child-parent audio is a more uneven setting. Children may speak in short turns, change pitch quickly, vocalize without producing clear words, interrupt adults, overlap with adult speech, cry, laugh, or code switch. These behaviors are normal in real family interaction, but they can confuse diarization systems that were mostly designed and evaluated on adult speech.

The …

Investigation Of Portland Limestone Cement Blended With Biochar From Downdraft Gasification: Hydration Kinetics, Microstructure, Rheology, And Performance Mechanisms, Ugochukwu Ewuzie, Paul C. Ani, Abdulkareem O. Yusuf, Joseph D. Smith, Monday Uchenna Okoronkwo

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The widespread adoption of Portland Limestone Cement (PLC) in U.S. concrete production has necessitated research into commercially available supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) for formulating high-performance, low-carbon blended binders with PLC. This study investigated the influence of biochar (BC) in biochar-PLC composites (CBCs), focusing on hydration kinetics, microstructure, rheology, pore-solution chemistry, compressive strength, and the underlying mechanisms. Biochar was produced via downdraft gasification at 850 °C and incorporated into PLC at 5, 7, and 10% substitution by mass. Isothermal calorimetry and hydration data modeled using the Knudsen equation revealed that BC retarded early hydration but improved hydration degree and later-age heat …

The Shrinking Caspian Sea: Eco‐Hydrological Responses To Human And Climate Pressures, Jesse Duku, Mohammad J. Tourian, Marzi Azarderakhsh, Rovshan Abbasov, Ali Mehran, Ali Torabi Haghighi, Stefanos Xenarios, Azara Boschee, Salih Babagiray, Mojtaba Sadegh, Nima Shokri, Ali Nazemi, Alireza Farahmand, Samaneh Ashraf, Temur Khujanazarov, Elmira Hassanzadeh, Dalal Najib, Daniel Placht, Shamshagul Mashtayeva, Ekaterina Rets, Hamid Norouzi, Kaveh Madani, Manoochehr Shirzaei, Hossein Shafizadeh-Moghadam, Chiyuan Miao, Ali Mirchi, Shuo Wang, Amir Aghakouchak

Publications and Research

The Caspian Sea, the Earth's largest inland water body, faces water level decline, drawing comparisons to the collapse of the Aral Sea. Unlike the Aral Sea, the relative roles of climatic variability, hydrological changes, and anthropogenic pressures on the Caspian Sea remain poorly understood. Here, we integrate satellite observations, in situ hydrological records and reanalysis data to examine recent drivers of the Caspian water loss. We show that total river inflow to the Caspian Sea has declined significantly, primarily due to reduced discharge from the Volga River. At the same time, precipitation over the basin has remained broadly stable, while …

Evaluating Chest-Worn Light Logger Adherence: Development And Application Of A Wear/Non-Wear Model, Carlyn Patterson Gentile, Adah Thomas, Ryan Shah, Blanca Marquez De Prado, Nichelle Raj, Christina Szperka, Geoffrey Aguirre

Student Papers, Posters & Projects

Light exposure plays an important role in overall health because it entrains circadian rhythms. Recent technological advances in wearable light loggers allow measurement daily light exposure habits. Using a chest-worn light logger, our goal was to (1) develop methodology for differentiating adherent versus non-adherent use, and (2) define differences in lighting intensity in indoor and outdoor environments, to improve data reliability in future clinical studies using this technology. Four testers used a 10-channel chest worn light logging device under different conditions of wear and non-wear (experiment 1), and another tester made measurements with the light logger across a variety of …

Foundations' Deep, Emily Williams, Morgan Williams

University Honors Theses

Most historic buildings do not survive as they were built, yet preservation frameworks still tend to evaluate them as if they did.

Foundations' Deep begins with a structure located in Helena, Montana 59602, a building that sits uneasily within the categories it has been asked to meet. Built in the early twentieth century, it has persisted through alteration, abandonment, and use. What remains is not a stable artifact but a record of accumulated decisions, some careful and many indifferent, now embedded in the fabric of the building itself.

The thesis grows from this condition and from the limits of the …

Bilingual Math For Kindergartners (Biki), Anna Aldrin, Caroline Tapia, Lillian Le

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For many children from bilingual households, kindergarten represents a critical, learning benchmark where the introduction of fundamental math concepts coincides with their first significant exposure to the English language. Traditional educational methods often fail to support English language learners, leading to a disconnect between their understanding of math in the home and its application in the classroom. This linguistic barrier frequently results in reduced engagement, diminished confidence, and an unstable educational foundation that can discourage students from pursuing STEM careers later in life. While existing platforms like Khan Academy and Duolingo address either language acquisition or mathematical proficiency independently, they …

Maya Roots, Erin Schmidt, Megu Kanzawa

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

This project focused on the continued development of Maya Roots, a mobile and web-based platform designed for farmers in Tahcabo: a rural agricultural community located in Yucatán, Mexico. Yucatán faces unique agricultural challenges due to its karst limestone terrain and highly variable land conditions that can significantly impact farming outcomes. At the same time, traditional agricultural knowledge such as Milpa farming practices is increasingly at risk of being lost across generations. These environmental and cultural challenges highlighted the need for a portable, accessible system that could preserve agricultural knowledge, improve access to geospatial information, and strengthen communication between farmers and …

A Comprehensive Survey Of Artificial Intelligence Applications In Predicting Mining-Induced Subsidence, Deformation, And Landslides: Strengths, Limitations, And Future Trends, Long Quoc Nguyen, Dung Ba Nguyen, Minh Tuyet Dang

Journal of Sustainable Mining

Mining activities often cause mining-induced ground deformation, including subsidence and landslides, and related geo-environmental impacts, posing significant risks to infrastructure and safety. This study conducts a systematic assessment to identify, categorize, and evaluate AI-based methods (machine learning, deep learning, and hybrid models) for predicting and monitoring mining-induced ground deformation. The literature search was performed across major scientific databases, using predefined keywords and selection criteria, resulting in a final dataset of relevant peer-reviewed studies. The reviewed works were classified into three methodological groups: traditional machine learning, deep learning-based approaches, and hybrid methods. The results show that ML still dominates in terms …

Mimica, Sean Lai, Gurprasaad Hora, Stephanie Campos

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Language barriers remain a significant obstacle to natural human communication, limiting access to healthcare, business, travel, and daily social interaction for billions of people worldwide. Existing translation solutions such as smartphone applications and earpiece devices address the functional problem of converting words between languages but fail to preserve the speaker’s voice identity, require hands-on interaction, or depend on proprietary device ecosystems. These limitations disrupt the natural flow of conversation and reduce the human quality of cross-lingual communication.

Mimica is a real-time wearable translation necklace designed to address these shortcomings. Built around an ESP32-S3 microcontroller with an integrated microphone and speaker, …