M.Eng. Projects
Key to the success of developing Systems Engineers who are well prepared to make a significant difference in the world is the M.Eng. project experience. These two-semester projects go beyond our diverse coursework and provide a more in-depth, hands on, and real-world opportunity to gain valuable experience in the application of Systems Engineering.
The M.Eng. program requires an engineering project of 6-9 credits completed over two semesters. With the guidance of a faculty advisor, students will work with a team to solve a real-world problem. The projects vary considerably in structure, length and topic. Students will have an opportunity to select from an array of cutting edge project topics including both existing projects that are continuations year after year or from the list of new projects created every year.
We encourage you to look at some of our on-going projects listed in the M.Eng. Project Portal below. You may also want to view our faculty websites to learn more about some of their latest research projects.
Past Systems Engineering M.Eng. Projects
Fall 2020
| Faculty Advisor | Project Team | Project Title | Project Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Schneider | Cornell Cup Robotics | C1C0 Robot | This team worked on a full redesign of the R2 system, developing a new robot that was able to incorporate many more sub-systems to better meet our overall goals. In that year, the team completed the work in the concept stage and moved into the development stage. Each sub-team had all of their required parts ordered and were ready to move into production. |
| David Schneider | Cornell Cup Robotics | C1C0 Robot | The chatbot subsystem is responsible for handling some or all functions for all use cases involving a user speaking to the C1C0 robot. These use cases include a user asking C1C0 a question about a given topic to the user asking C1C0 to retrieve for them some object present in the environment. |
| Al George | Cornell Formula SAE | Cornell Racing | The objective of this project was to address key pitfalls in Cornell FSAE’s project and system management processes, as well as to outline to the future team and sub-team leaders the elements of ISO 29110 which could be realistically adapted or appended to the team’s current processes to correct them. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | Sustainable Mobility | Shelter design implementation documentation for any reminaing systems to progress a full-system test. Widening the scope of the project to capture users and sustems that interface with the shelter, furthering the team's mission to bring enjoyment, safety, and legibility to all aspects of the rider experience. Ensuring organization continuity and sufficient knowledge transfer. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | CUSD Sustainable Mobility - Garage | The team focused on using Systems Engineering and Design Thinking tools to understand how to tackle challenges regarding wayfinding. This included understanding various user needs, analyzing how users interact with the system, and figuring out effective ways to communicate important information. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | CUSD Sustainable Mobility - Planning | By devoting additional time to empathy fieldwork and implementing quantitative ethnography, the team aims to deliver robust solutions to the dissatisfaction within the transportation system at Cornell. The team has been reframing the challenge and developing their own solutions and designs. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | CURRENTS - Sustainable Design | Thermal Modeling |
| David Schneider | Moog | Moog Aircraft Group: A Universal Automated RVDT Test Stand | This project is building a Universal Automated RVDT Test Stand. A Rotary Variable Differential Transformer (RVDT) is an electromechanical sensor used to measure rotational position. |
| Max Zhang | Measuring the Impact of a Real-World Electric Heat Pump Conversion Project on Thermal Comfort | This project did a review of the systems engineering methods that were employed in the development of the thermal comfort survey system. Two thermal comfort surveys will be developed -one will be sent out regarding the fuel oil boiler system, and another will be sent out regarding the air-source heat pumps. The four key groups of stakeholders in this project were the building tenants, the team from the Energy and the Environment Lab at Cornell,Taitem Engineering, and Daikin. Taitem Engineering provided building energy consulting services throughout the project, while Daikin provided the heat pumps used in the building transition. | |
| Demonstration of Suborbital Chipsats Ejected from New Shepard Test Flight (DeSCENT) | The Demonstration of Suborbital Chipsats Ejected from New Shepard Test Flight (DeSCENT) mission will conduct the first ever test of chip-scale satellite (chipsat) deployment from a commercial reusable launch vehicle to test operational and survival capability during suborbital re-entry. | ||
| This project worked on designing and implementing a robust system that a high school or college football team could use to improve the analytics and information processing capabilities of any team. | |||
| Jingjie Yeo | Potential Energy Surface Models for Hydrothermal Liquefaction Biocrude Oils: Machine Learning in Molecular Dynamics | The objective of this project was to investigate how deep learning and deep neural networks may have applications to molecular dynamics. | |
| Microgrid | This project focuses on the rural community of Corcovada and their needs for an independent and resilient energy generation system. | ||
| Energy Disaggregation System Design with Federated Learning | To address NILM’s privacy concerns, this work proposes a design of NILM using Federated Learning. The name of the proposed system design is FedNILM. In addition, the Log Line of the proposed system is: An energy disaggregation system that leverages federated learning as a novel way to improve data privacy, increase accuracy of energy disaggregation, and ultimately increase user’s trust in real-time appliance-level feedback data. | ||
| Combined Solar Heating and Thermoelectric Generation (CSHTEG) | The Combined Solar Heating and Thermoelectric Generation (CSHTEG) Project addresses the wide gap between on-grid and off-grid communities. This system, which is intended for small households in off-grid communities, builds off existing solar energy technology, converts solar energy into electricity, and uses excess thermal energy for other daily functions, such as cooking. | ||
| Low Thrust Cubesat Trajectory Determination and Operational Preparation | The pair of 3U cubesats are designed to prove two major technological break-throughs: simple optical navigation and water electrolysis propulsion. The simple optical navigation system is attempting to use three off-the-shelf cameras to deter-mine the satellites’ location in space, so that future cubesats can effectively determine their position cheaply and consistently. | ||
| Buz Barstow | Bacterial Colony Picking from Segmented Plate Using Norgren CP7200 Colony Picker | It would be beneficial to modify the current functionality of the CP7200 Colony Picker to include segmented picking capabilities. In order to do so, there are two parts to this project: new hardware to section the plate and software updates on the colony picker to recognize and pick from a segmented plate. |
| Faculty Advisor | Project Team | Project Title | Project Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMAT | Analysis of Multi Armed Bandit Algorithms and Applications in Semiconductor Wafer Inspection and Metrology | One of the objectives of this project is to provide an empirical analysis of existing bandit algorithms along different dimensions such as, expected regret, regret distribution. The study should also identify for each algorithm the settings where it performs well on simulated data, and the settings where it performs poorly. | |
| Keith Green | Architectural Robotics Lab | Design, Kinematics, Prototyping, and System Analysis of SPACE (Surface by Pneumatic Actuation to Configure Environment), a Continuum Robot Surface “Shaping” Human Activity | Focuses on the systems engineering process concerning the design, kinematics, physical prototyping, and testing of the second iteration of a continuum, human assistive surface, SPACE. |
| Sirietta Simocini | CCPD | Glow; Keep going, Keep glowing | The team designed and prototyped a product that enables seniors to maintain common daily tasks despite changes in their physical or mental capabilities. The product LeverEdge is intended to enhance safety and promote independence in the senior community. |
| David Schneider | Cornell Cup Robotics | Business/ Communications Subteam | The Spring 2020 objectives for the Business/Communications subteam was split into three major focus areas: logistics, finance, and external outreach. Logistics dealt with coordination with respect to recruitment, social events, and apparel; finance is related to procurement and budgeting for all subteams; external outreach consisted of the development of the Big Dreams to Big Screens (BDBS) initiative and social media. |
| David Schneider | Cornell Cup Robotics | Minibot - Modular Educational Robotics Kit | CS Documentation |
| Al George John Callister | Cornell FSAE | Wind Tunnel System Design and Integration | Regular access to the HVL wind tunnel, complete with a robust testing infrastructure, would prove transformative for the future development and success of not only the aerodynamics package but the project team as a whole. Thus, the task of designing, manufacturing, and assembling the entire wind tunnel testing system was the focus of my MEng project. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | Sustainable Education – Nepal & India | Cornell University Sustainable Education’s (SE) mission is to incorporate the sustainable design framework into schools and dormitories in developing and rural regions. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | Sustainable Mobility Group - Shelter | Within the larger Cornell University Sustainable Design (CUSD), the Shelter Design Team enacts the mission of designing, constructing, and implementing a solar powered bus shelter for use by residents of the Ithaca, and the Cornell community. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | Sustainable Mobility Group - Garage | The Garage Team transitioned to the larger scope of a Downtown Ithaca Wayfinding System. The broadened scope of the project is a pedestrian wayfinding system in downtown Ithaca that helps any user navigate and explore Ithaca and includes Ithaca’s garages as portals in and out of downtown Ithaca. |
| Tobias Hanrath | CUSD | Solarize | Solarize aims to create a mobile solar trailer that provides clean electricity to charge batteries for weed whackers, hedge trimmers, and other tools on the go. |
| Al George | CUSD | Ithaca Carbon Neutrality | CUSD project was launched to support the City of Ithaca's Green New Deal program. The project team was tasked with providing a consulting report to inform the building retrofit policy that would be enacted as part of the Green New Deal legislation. |
| Sirietta Simoncini | CUSD | Sustainable Mobility - Planning | The Planning team examined the current state of transportation on Cornell's Ithaca campus and how it might be improved. |
| CUSD REAL | Subscale Aquaponics System Design for Cold Climate | This project aims to address this food security issue by designing and validating a small-scale aquaponics system that could encourage farming activities within small communities and communities where it is difficult to access food and resources. | |
| Amit Lal | ECE | Temperature Error Compensation on Integrated | The major goal of this project is to reduce the extreme temperature impact on integrated circuit design. |
| Rob Shepherd | MAE & Systems Engineering | Cornell Geoengineering Aircraft Design | This project addresses the feasibility of injecting sulfuric acid aerosols at altitudes above 20 km. A conventional transport aircraft with modifications in the propulsion and wings subsystems is proposed as the optimal design for the geoengineering mission yielding a peak altitude of 26.6 km with a 35-ton payload of sulfuric acid aerosols. |
| H. Oliver Gao | MITRE Group | Architecting Urban Air Mobility Airport Shuttling Systems with Case Studies: Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas | This study aims to define how one can effectively architect an UAM system for transportation to and from any given airport. |
| Sunghwan Jung | Systems M.Eng. Project Report | This project specifically focuses on the instrumentation and electromechanical design for the use of fish bladders to create more efficient underwater sound projector and receiver subsystems as part of a larger sonar system. |