Engineering Commons^™

Investigating Decision Factors For Modularization And Standardization Decision On Early Project Phase: Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Amrit Shahi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Modularization involves shifting site-based work to offsite locations to enhance overall productivity, reduce costs, shorten schedules, and improve project competitiveness. By developing and utilizing consistent designs, facility standardization further optimizes project schedules, costs, and value. When combined, they create a leveraging opportunity, as seen in the shipbuilding and manufacturing industries. While both strategies offer significant advantages, capital projects struggle to have a well-informed modularization and standardization decision during the early project phase (i.e., Opportunity Framing). This often results in improper implementation and lower modularization and standardization levels. The main cause for this is the industry’s limited understanding of early-phase high-level …

Elevating Education: Leveling Up Individual Learning Plans, Maximum Mgrdich-Ararat Sirabian

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This three-article dissertation investigated the effectiveness, implementation quality, and automation of Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) in promoting college and career readiness. Article 1 analyzed High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 data and found that ILPs did not significantly guide course alignment. Article 2 examined ILP implementation across Nevada high schools, revealing inconsistent quality, limited standardization, and few culturally responsive practices. These findings informed the creation of a new high-quality ILP framework. Article 3 employed a convergent parallel mixed methods design to assess an automated ILP prototype based on this framework. Participants in the automated group reported significantly higher scores in …

Bell Telephone System’S Preeminent Role In The Growth Of Industrial Design, Ralph O. Meyer, Russell A. Flinchum

Purdue University Press Books

Histories of design pay scant attention to the corded telephone, which played an immeasurable role in early communication. Although the Bell System, with many Nobel Prizes, is justly acknowledged for its technical prowess, it should also be recognized for its early and considerable impact on the developing discipline of industrial design. In 1930, young Henry Dreyfuss, who would later become known as a pioneer of industrial design, was retained by the Bell System as a design consultant and matured in that environment. With substantial input from Bell System engineers, Dreyfuss and his staff produced attractive telephone designs that were manufactured …

The Hidden Logic Behind Migration And Success, Elsa Russom

Master's Projects and Capstones

This research paper explores the hidden drivers of financial success among Eritrean migrants navigating uncertainty, displacement, and limited institutional access. Drawing on original survey data collected from diaspora communities across East African host countries, I apply a mixed-methods framework combining ordinal and binary logistic regression, random forest classification, bootstrapping, and Bayesian causal mediation; to identify the structural and cultural variables most predictive of financial stability. The findings reveal that participation in Ekub, a traditional rotating savings association, and engagement in communal support systems are the strongest predictors of financial success, outperforming conventional factors such as age, education, or employment status. …

Entrepreneurs In The Making: A Qualitative Exploration Of Entrepreneurial Mindset In Engineering Learners, Ethan C. Howard

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

A prominent statistic within the field of entrepreneurship is the relatively low business failure rate of entrepreneurs holding engineering degrees compared with entrepreneurs holding other degrees. Engineers, particularly with software engineering and mechanical engineering backgrounds, account for approximately 20% of all billionaires and are similarly overrepresented among millionaires. The underlying reasons for how entrepreneurs achieve success has been explored in a number of ways, including in research on Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM). A collated model of EM highlights four key areas on the likelihood of entrepreneurial success for an individual: 1) cognitive perspective, 2) creating value by recognizing and acting on …

Terraincraft: Automated Land-Cover–Driven Terrain Generation For Marine Robot Simulations, Xinyue Liang

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

From self-driving cars navigating city streets to all-terrain vehicles tackling rugged landscapes, recent leaps in robotic autonomy due to fast pace development in deep learning are reshaping how machines interact with the real world. However, autonomy in the aquatic environment is still limited, due to difficulty in testing and unavailability of realistic simulation environments.

In this project, we aim to create an automated system that simplifies the processes of creating synthetic datasets for marine robots navigation training tasks. We achieved this through a land cover map controlled terrain generation. Our goal is to provide an automatic terrain generation system that …

Thermaltrack Dataset- Training Images- Fused Rgb Lwir- Sequence 1, Yiming Yang, Jeremy Bos

ThermalTrack

We present a wheel track detection system that leverages RGB-Thermal (RGB-T) imaging, where thermal channels reveal critical temperature differentials between compacted tracks and loose snow - tracks exhibit higher thermal inertia and lower reflectivity, emitting stronger radiation signatures even in visually homogeneous conditions. By fusing these distinctive thermal patterns with RGB spatial information, our method reliably identifies navigable tracks, enabling robust path-following in complete white-out conditions where snow textures and terrain features become indistinguishable.

Explorations Of Amplified Feedback In Quantum Circuits, Maxwell B. Weiner

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The Josephson Traveling Wave Parametric Amplifier (TWPA) has emerged as a key technology for high-fidelity qubit readout in superconducting quantum computing. By leveraging the nonlinear inductance of an array of Josephson Junctions, the TWPA enables broadband, near-quantum-limited amplification with minimal added noise, significantly improving the signal-to-noise ratio in qubit measurements. Unlike traditional resonant parametric amplifiers, which suffer from bandwidth constraints, the traveling wave design of the TWPA allows for wideband operation, making it particularly suited for multiplexed readout of both simple qubits and large-scale quantum processors.

In this thesis, we explore how the TWPA can be integrated into a feedback …

High Dynamic Range Actively Quenched Silicon-Germanium Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes, Abraham Castaneda

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) are solid-state devices capable of providing large current pulses in the milliampere range in response to incident photons. The large gain inherent to SPADs makes them a popular technology for photon-counting applications, but their operation can be hindered by long recharge times, which necessitates the use of active quenching to reduce dead times and increase detection rates. For the prompt gamma/neutron radiation experiments conducted at the Nevada National Security Site, photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) have been the primary photodetector of choice, but their continued use is expected to dwindle as it becomes increasingly difficult to source quality …

Developments On Abbreviations Towards Machine Reading Comprehension, Sing Choi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Machine reading comprehension is a critical step in development of applications that require the semantic understanding of human speech-to-text driven work. Many devices such as smart home appliances like the Amazon Echo Dot, Google Home, or smart assistants like Apple Siri or Microsoft Cortana are examples of these applications. The comprehension task involves a deeper understanding and recognition of named entities such as person names, locations, medicals codes, quantities, abbreviations, and acronyms in speech or text data. In this dissertation, we explore and extend the different approaches and techniques in modern research that tackles the problem of recognition and definition …

An Edge Computing Device Optimized And Transfer Learning Enhanced Deep Learning Model For Detecting Wildfire Flame And Smoke, Giovanny Vazquez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The integration of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with edge computing technology and deep learning (DL)-based object detection offers a groundbreaking solution for real-time wildfire detection, enabling rapid data processing directly on devices and minimizing response delays in critical scenarios. However, although showing early promise, performance is often constrained by limited training data and edge computing devices that lack graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration. This thesis seeks to address these limitations in two stages.First, this work explores the transformative potential of Transfer Learning (TL) to enhance wildfire object detection model accuracy while also investigating TL’s impact, for DL-based object detection …

Instability-Driven Phase Separation For Quantum Structure Formation In Iii-V Semiconductors, Leonid Miroshnik

Chemical and Biological Engineering ETDs

High temperature phase instability limits the performance of III-V zinc blende semiconductor devices. A technique using an encapsulant and sacrificial layer is developed to reduce thermal degradation by group V sublimation during thermal processing of InGaAs/GaAs structures. This technique is successful in preventing As sublimation and preserving an atomically smooth surface required for surface-sensitive characterization. The degradation of the GaAsSb/InP interface by phase separation is studied. Significant interdiffusion and intermixing occurs due to the formation of a molten InSb at the interface. The intermixing is driven by phase separation and melting of the InSb interfacial layer that enhances atomic mobility. …

Predicting Battery Levels Of Sensor Nodes Using Reinforcement Learning In Harsh Underground Mining Environments, Manish Anand Yadav, Mohamed Elmahallawy, Sanjay Madria, Samuel Frimpong

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Underground mining is a hazardous environment, with frequent accidents leading to significant loss of life each year. To enhance safety, sensor nodes monitor key environmental factors such as temperature, toxic gases, and miners' locations, as well as transmit critical messages. Miners interact with these sensors, which track their movements, enabling their location to be determined even without GPS signals. Therefore, predicting the battery life of these sensors is essential for: (i) rerouting miners during emergencies, (ii) ensuring timely maintenance, and most importantly (iii) identifying sensors that need energy harvesting to maintain vital communication within the mine. In this work, we …

Life Cycle Assessment Of Co-Located Floating Solar And Offshore Wind, Danela Sadikaj, Meghann Smith

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Is combining floating solar and offshore wind platforms feasible for increasing energy capacity while displacing the environmental impacts that each of these systems has independently? In recent years offshore wind has become a very popular option to decarbonize the energy sector without overtaking valuable land. While floating solar is not a new technology, using solar in a marine environment is still in an experimental phase. This research proposes a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model of co-located solar technology within the proposed offshore wind farms near New Jersey’s coastline. While both technologies themselves are zero-emission while operating, they each require a …

Reducing Emissions And Increasing Resource Efficiency In Offshore Wind Turbines: Insight From Life Cycle Analysis, Jean Claire Pineda, Meghann Smith

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Globally, offshore wind (OSW) has been identified as a key technology for decarbonization. While OSW’s development timeline remains uncertain in the United States, New Jersey has set the ambitious goal of 11 GW by 2040. OSW produces zero carbon emissions; however, it relies heavily on resource-intensive materials like steel, rare earth elements, and copper, and manufacturing those materials have numerous environmental impacts, including carbon emissions. Supply chain disruptions—from COVID-19, rising material costs, and geopolitical challenges—add further complexity. Previous research modelled the environmental impacts of Atlantic Shores OSW South Project with an established domestic supply chain, producing 0.013kg CO2 per kWh. …

Automated Solar Panel For Lmu Campus, Michael Hennessy, Jack Michaelis, Jack Leon, Nick Aiello, Mustafa Mozael

Honors Thesis

This Final Design Review outlines the design and implementation of an automated sun-tracking solar panel system for Loyola Marymount University's campus. The project aims to improve the efficiency of existing static solar panels by designing a new system of sun-tracking panels at a low cost and high power efficiency. The report covers the project's background, including LMU's current solar energy infrastructure and sustainability goals. It analyzes the advantages of automated solar panels over static ones, presenting comparative studies that demonstrate significant increases in energy capture. The report details the calculations for solar angle tracking, along with the mechanics and electronics …

Memory-Augmented Llm Agent For Predicting Locomotion Modes In Construction Activities, Ehsan Ahmadi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The construction industry faces significant challenges, including labor shortages, high physical demands, and safety risks, necessitating advanced assistive technologies like exoskeletons to enhance worker efficiency and reduce injuries. However, effective exoskeleton control in dynamic construction environments requires accurate locomotion prediction, a task complicated by the diversity of activities and reliance on supervised learning methods that struggle to generalize. This study investigates a multimodal approach to locomotion prediction, leveraging speech commands and visual data from smart glasses to enable adaptive and safe human-exoskeleton interaction. The research unfolds in two stages: the first develops a framework to evaluate the zero-shot capability and …

Real-World Implementation Of A Noninvasive, Ai-Augmented, Anemia-Screening Smartphone App And Personalization For Hemoglobin Level Self-Monitoring, Robert G. Mannino, Julie Sullivan, Jennifer K. Frediani, Paul George, Jeremy Whitson, James Tumlin, L. Andrew Lyon, Erika A. Tyburski, Wilbur A. Lam

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Anemia, characterized by low blood hemoglobin (Hgb) levels, afflicts >2 billion individuals worldwide. Here, we report real-world data generated by a smartphone app that noninvasively screens for anemia using only “fingernail selfies.” App data for anemia screening were obtained from >1.4 million uses across the United States enabling geographic mapping of Hgb levels. Of those, 9,061 users also self-reported complete blood count Hgb levels for comparison, resulting in accuracy and performance that match gold standard laboratory testing and a sensitivity and specificity of 89% and 93%, respectively, when using an anemia cutoff of 12.5 g/dL. Geotagged data enabled construction of …

Automated Client Dashboard For Facts Student Information System, Kashish Syed

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This project addresses the challenges of student data migration for K-12 educational institutions to the FACTS Student Information System (SIS). Historically, data migration from legacy platforms has been a manual and error-prone process. To streamline this workflow, an interactive client dashboard and automated validation system were developed as part of this capstone. The resulting solution is a scalable, intuitive tool that enhances data accuracy, reduces manual labor, and improves the user experience for both school administrators and FACTS staff. This report blends the technical implementation with reflections on project management, team collaboration, and lessons learned, offering a comprehensive view of …

Proposed Civil Design Package For Lincoln Youth Sports Complex, Gracie Kerr, Hayden Wulf, Kiley Pham, Caitlin Keathley

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The following report is a proposal of civil work and an engineering design package for the City of Lincoln to construct a Youth Sports Complex on the vacant lot at 2100 North 1^st Street, Lincoln, Lancaster County, Nebraska. The city has requested five U10 to U14 combination baseball and softball fields, one championship softball field, and one championship baseball field. Additionally, a playground area, concessions building, and designated parking areas have been requested. This design package includes introductory company and project information, a summary of the design request and constraints, three overall design alternatives, discipline-specific engineering designs and recommendations, …

Wind Shear And The Role Of Eddy Vapor Transport In Driving Water Convection On Jupiter, Ramanakumar Sankar, Michael H. Wong, Csaba Palotai, Shawn Brueshaber

Michigan Tech Publications

Recent observations of convection in the Jovian atmosphere have demonstrated that convection is strongly concentrated at specific locations on the planet. For instance, observations of lightning show that the cyclonic features (e.g., belts and folded filamentary regions) show increased convective activity compared to anticyclonic regions. Meanwhile, the distribution of ammonia and water vapor shows a large enrichment near the equator, which is also suggestive of strong upwelling and convective activity. Marrying these different observations is challenging owing to a lack of data concerning the characteristics of the deep Jovian atmosphere and a resulting inability to observe the true deep source …

A Case Study Of Pavement Construction Materials For Wet-Freeze Regions: The Application Of Waste Glass Aggregate And High-Content Rubber Modified Asphalt, Kai Xin, Meng Wu, Dongzhao Jin, Zhanping You

Michigan Tech Publications

Pavement systems in wet-freeze regions are prone to cracking, rutting, and moisture damage, making it challenging to incorporate recycled materials into asphalt mixtures in a way that enhances sustainability while maintaining performance and constructability. This study investigates and demonstrates the combined benefits of using processed waste glass in a leveling course and high-content crumb rubber in a surface course, focusing on both laboratory and full-scale field assessments in a wet-freeze region of northern Michigan. A leveling course containing 10% waste glass aggregate and a surface course using 16% crumb rubber (by binder weight) modified asphalt were designed with low air …

Reconfiguration-Driven Assembly Of Inorganic Nanomembranes, Divya Jyoti Prakash

Chemical and Biological Engineering ETDs

This thesis focuses on the guided self-assembly of metastable nanomembranes (NMs) that are either amorphous or polycrystalline. Guided self-assembly of NMs is a robust and scalable method to obtain a variety of three-dimensional structures such as helices, rolled-up tubes, and networks of interconnected channels. These 3D structures have important applications as on-chip actuators, sensors, inductors, transformers, waveguides, and antennas. Furthermore, a large amount of strain and strain gradient can be imparted in NMs by bending them to a nanoscale and microscale radius of curvature, making guided self-assembly on NMs a viable route to extreme strain engineering of amorphous and polycrystalline …

Engaging Youth In Community Problem Solving Through Community Partnerships, Kim Hales, Catherine Jurado, Mercedis Zismer

Utah Conference on Community Engagement

This panel discussion will present a community-engaged project in which four community partners work with youth in the context of a USU ENG 1010 or USU ENG 2010 writing assignment. This assignement asks students to identify a problem in their community by which they are directly impacted. The student then works with the community partner to document the problem and to brainstorm possible solutions to the issue. The panel will invite audience members to share their experiences with similarly designed assignments and to offer input, critique, and suggestions. Audience members will also be invited to ask questions to the panel …

A Study Of The Impact Of Balancing, Geometric Transformation, Generative Networks Augmentation, And Roi Techniques In Eye Diseases Classification, Sghaira Hareb Alnuaimi

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

Automatic detection of ocular diseases helps medical professionals efficiently identify eye disorders, reduce diagnostic errors, and accelerate diagnoses to prevent blindness. Deep learning has been successfully utilized in various fields, including medical image classification. However, in spite of these advancements, challenges remain in ocular disease classification.
/="/">The objective of this work is to address these challenges using data processing, data augmentation in combination with Region of Interest (ROI) techniques. Medical datasets often suffer from scarcity, imbalance, and low-quality images, leading to inaccurate classification. To mitigate these issues, we utilize the ODIR dataset, which contains 7,000 labelled training images for …

Wide Lock-In Energy Harvesting From Vortex-Induced Vibrations Of A Deformable Cylinder, Ahmed Raafat Mostafa

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

Energy harvesting from ambient sources has gained attention due to increasing energy demands. Despite VIV-based harvesters showing significant potential, their lock-in region, where significant power is generated, is narrow. Given the continuously varying ambient conditions of fluid currents, harvesters can easily fall into de-synchronization, yielding low energy output. Existing solutions like tunable masses or multiple degrees of freedom systems increase complexity and weight, limiting practical applications. This work introduces a novel variable diameter cylinder mechanism—a practical technique that actively tunes the cylinder’s geometry in real time to enhance energy harvesting efficiency from VIV. The mechanism employs an expanding pulley system …

Computational Complexity Of Soundness Verification For Neural Networks, Scott Sirri

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Neural networks are an increasingly ubiquitous tool in systems of varying complexity across a range of domains. While these tools can be used to learn and predict complex functions, their opaque nature limits the scope of their acceptable applications. In particular, a lack of performance guarantees means that they are unsuitable for safety-critical applications such as self-driving cars and scheduling systems. Neural networks trained to solve NP-complete problems, in particular, are unlikely to be able to solve the problem exactly. However, a weaker soundness guarantee may be sufficient for some systems, e.g., that positive instances of the problem may be …

Transfer Learning For Temporal Logic Objectives, Lucas M. Santana Rovira

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Reinforcement learning algorithms can enable autonomous systems to learn the control skills needed to accomplish a task specified by a linear temporal logic formula. However, they cannot be transferred to a new task, even when the two are very similar. For each new task, the policy must be redesigned from scratch, which is a common limitation of existing reinforcement learning methods for temporal logic tasks. A proposed solution to this problem leverages the similarity between past and new tasks to reuse already learned control skills to accomplish the new task, with minimal or no retraining.

Rather than learning a single …

Impact Of Prior Exposures On Biomarkers Of Blast During Military Tactical Training, Zhaoyu Wang, Shengnan Sun, Alis Aksar Kranfli, Jeffrey Nemes, Molly J. Sullan, Andrew J. Hoisington, Lisa A. Brenner, Miciej Skotak, Christina R. Lavalle, Yongchao Ge, Walter Carr, Fatemah Haghighi

Faculty Publications

Blast injuries and subclinical effects are of significant concern among those Service Members (SMs) participating in military operations and tactical trainings. Studies of SMs repeatedly exposed during training find concussion-like symptomology with transient decrements in neurocognitive performance, and alterations in blood biomarkers. How prior mild TBI (mTBI) history interacts with low-level blast (LLB) exposure, however, remains unexplored, which we investigate in the present study, to identify interindividual biomarker changes from LLB exposures influenced by prior history of mTBI.

In-Hand Singulation, Scooping, And Cable Untangling With A 5-Dof Tactile-Reactive Gripper, Yuhao Zhou, Pokuang Zhou, Shaoxiong Wang, Yu She

School of Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Manipulation tasks often require a high degree of dexterity, typically necessitating grippers with multiple degrees of freedom (DOF). While a robotic hand equipped with multiple fingers can execute precise and intricate manipulation tasks, the inherent redundancy stemming from its high-DOF often adds complexity that may not be required. In this paper, we introduce the design of a tactile sensor-equipped gripper with two fingers and five-DOF. We present a novel design integrating a GelSight tactile sensor, enhancing sensing capabilities and enabling finer control during specific manipulation tasks. To evaluate the gripper's performance, we conduct experiments involving three challenging tasks: 1) retrieving, …