STEAMtank is a project beneath that falls under the umbrella of InnovationSpace, an initiative of the Design School at Arizona State University. STEAMtank is the product of the product of the honors thesis of Abigail Peters, who envisioned a K-8 STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) museum that was hosted on campus at ASU and was free to the community to promote STEAM education for underrepresented communities. STEAMtank is now in its second iteration, with six teams creating six attractions for the museum. Alongside these projects, presented here is a concept design for a museum exhibit focused entirely around chemistry, a particular branch of science that is lacking from all K-8 focused STEAM exhibits in Phoenix.

Spatial audio can be especially useful for directing human attention. However, delivering spatial audio through speakers, rather than headphones that deliver audio directly to the ears, produces the issue of crosstalk, where sounds from each of the two speakers reach the opposite ear, inhibiting the spatialized effect. A research team at Meteor Studio has developed an algorithm called Xblock that solves this issue using a crosstalk cancellation technique. This thesis project expands upon the existing Xblock IoT system by providing a way to test the accuracy of the directionality of sounds generated with spatial audio. More specifically, the objective is to determine whether the usage of Xblock with smart speakers can provide generalized audio localization, which refers to the ability to detect a general direction of where a sound might be coming from. This project also expands upon the existing Xblock technique to integrate voice commands, where users can verbalize the name of a lost item using the phrase, “Find [item]”, and the IoT system will use spatial audio to guide them to it.

This study was conducted in order to better understand the ways in which social and environmental justice curriculum would suit engineers. In particular, it focuses on how social and environmental justice are valued in engineering and the internal and external barriers engineers face in pursuing it. The research first discusses the role of engineering in social and environmental justice, followed by common engineering ideologies and existing interactions between engineers and justice. The results in this paper presents the findings of qualitative data analysis of transcriptions of interviews conducted with engineers regarding social and environmental justice. The responses of interviewees were organized into different categories of value and obstacles were identified, analyzed, and discussed. The interpretations presented in this paper are tentative and are a part of an ongoing study that will be released at a later date.

STEM programs are the programs for the future. Technology is advancing at a rapid speed and the world is trying to keep up. Engineering is leading the charge within that because engineers are always at the forefront of innovation. However, just the prospect of growth is not enough for students to want to become professional engineers. Black female students have the desire to better their knowledge by going to institutions of higher education, but they do not share that same passion for engineering education. This study aims to understand that. This research is looking into retention factors for students in engineering and how those factors can be transferred to Black women. It was found that factors like bias training for students and faculty, integration to engineering organizations, getting more Black female professors and faculty, and introduction to prerequisite courses like calculus and physics to Black females in grade school.

Realtime understanding of one’s complete metabolic state is crucial to controlling weight and managing chronic illnesses, such as diabetes. This project represents the development of a novel breath acetone sensor within the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors. The purpose is to determine if a sensor can be manufactured with the capacity to measure breath acetone concentrations typical of various levels of metabolic activity. For this purpose, a solution that selectively interacts with acetone was embedded in a sensor cartridge that is permeable to volatile organic compounds. After 30 minutes of exposure to a range of acetone concentrations, a color change response was observed in the sensors. Requiring only exposure to a breath, these novel sensor configurations may offer non-trivial improvements to clinical and at-home measurement of lipid metabolic rate.