Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Founders Lab is a thesis pathway for Barrett students under W.P. Carey’s Center for Entrepreneurship. The pathway provides students of all majors with the opportunity to experience entrepreneurship through designing a business idea and obtaining traction for that idea. In this honors thesis project, safety on the Arizona State University campus was considered to create a business idea involving personal safety jewelry. Throughout the year of Founders Lab, this concept has been refined and ultimately tested for its demand and potential.

A significant sub-market within student affairs has been long ignored and broken: Student housing success. Research shows that strong relationships between students that live together are crucial to the well-being and academic success of that student. The problem is that universities have not figured out a standard way to group students effectively with some universities opting to market this inefficiency as a normal part of the college experience. For our thesis as a part of Founders Lab, we created our company, RiZing, to tackle this inefficiency. RiZing addresses the student-housing gap and proves that the lack of effective matching can be solved with the right people and of course, video games. Both students and higher education institutions are desperately trying to solve this problem. General event service vendors are racing just as quickly to serve this collegiate market and are extremely motivated to work with anyone who does. As the world today is becoming increasingly digitized, the founders of RiZing believe that the solution to building and maintaining strong connections with peers is possible through leveraging technology such as video games to create strong personal bonds.

Uncle Dan is dead. He’s dead and Aunt Clara and Mike move across the country, leaving Jack and Jamie in their small Ohio town. Jamie spirals out of two relationships she thought would last forever, and Jack adventures across the country to bring back his cousin and return the family to a sense of normalcy. But the pair will soon realize that normal is relative and the truth is how you spin it, especially in the face of grief.

Polar Hydration is a company whose mission is to combat the risk of dehydration in cold climates and inspire the adventurer with all of us. Through ASU’s Founders Lab and a partnership with NASA, we set out to take NASA patented technology and develop a business plan through gauging public interest via surveys and interviews, and implementing a marketing strategy based on those results. Our product consists of a freeze-resistant hydration pack which uses insulation and electronics to actively heat its water contents and prevent freezing. With outdoor activities, the colder the weather the higher the risk of dehydration. This is due to the intake of colder dryer air as well as it being harder to recognize that you are losing liquids through sweat as it is in warmer climates. In winter sports such as skiing and snowboarding as well as colder conditions for hiking and hunting, this can become a huge problem as water is not readily available. That’s why, at Polar Hydration, we took NASA patented technology to design our freeze-resistant hydration pack. It’s designed like most other hydration packs, consisting of a backpack with a plastic bladder holding water and straw to drink from, but with additional layers of insulation and electronics to prevent water from freezing. With this, we will combat dehydration and inspire the adventurer within all of us.

Though invisible from our vision, and often from our minds as a result, the quality of the air around us has immense impacts on the health of the environment and our populations. Typically, defined by the presence of three main pollutants, particulate matter 10, particulate matter 2.5, and ozone, air quality can be highly localized. Because of this, some communities can be hit harder by air quality issues. The South Mountain Village is an example of a community that is being drastically impacted by issues of air quality. Even though air pollution can have an array of causes that are difficult to pin-point, the impacts that it has on human health and quality of life are just the opposite. Consistent exposure to polluted air can result in short term health effects such as discomfort and shortness of breath along with longer term effects such as asthma and lung cancer. Areas with higher concentrations of pollutants in the air often see an increase in the health issues mentioned. In the case of the South Mountain area, there are many direct and indirect sources of the issue. The area has a higher than average amount of industry such as metal and plastic manufacturing, and the residences are mixed right in with these. Additionally, the area has less wealth and a higher population of racial minorities. These two things are not coincidences, as air quality is an environmental issue that is highly systemic. This thesis project will surround the process of developing and implementing ideas to mitigate the negative effects of air quality in the area, as well as exploring sources of the issue -- both scientific and historic. Project ideas ranging from technology to policies will be considered and investigated in order to produce feasible and actionable plans.

Lignin is an energy dense polymer that forms the secondary layer within a plants cell wall. Within the cell wall, lignin acts as a matrix material, providing structural integrity to the plant. This polymer is often a byproduct from harvesting cellulose and has traditionally been used in resins, insulation, and adhesives. Recent research has indicated that lignin’s hierarchical structure may offer advantage in dissipating fracture energy while its fibrous composite arrangement prevents crack growth. Because of lignin’s unique chemical characteristics, different formulations and combinations with resins and bioplastics using lignin has started to make way for a new cost-effective and non-polluting alternative for the current petroleum-based plastics used globally. The goal of the following project was to develop a material that could show resilience in replacing the petroleum-based plastic used in small format items whilst also demonstrating high efficacy in biodegradation.