Ambitious Seniors Design and Build Solutions to the Toughest Engineering Problems

In the laboratories of USC Viterbi School of Engineering, student teams are transforming theoretical concepts into groundbreaking technological solutions, demonstrating how cutting-edge research can solve complex challenges across automotive, robotic and space exploration domains. Here’s a selection of some of the top innovations that were presented at the AME Senior Design Showcase on 5 December, 2025.

Particulate Contamination Detection and Targeted Removal for Telescope Optics

Jack Clark, Alisa Higuchi, Edward Luc Linsley, Shane Roberts

Every engineer knows the value of clean tools. Telescopes are no exception.

The trouble is, current industry standards rely on labor-intensive, expensive and full-surface cleaning methods that do not account for contamination concentration and distribution. This team’s project features a manually-operated robotic cleaning system for the programmatic detection and targeted removal of surface contamination from telescope optics.

The project lays the groundwork for optical systems that can autonomously detect, interpret, and clean themselves – essentially becoming closed-loop platforms. The key engineering challenge involves creating a reliable, vision-based algorithm that can accurately map contamination to inform the precision of mechanical cleaning processes. By employing targeted cleaning, the system aims to reduce labor, cost, optical downtime, and long-term mirror degradation. Paired with a manually operated robotic cleaning system, the project presents a scalable pathway for observatories to maintain high optical performance.

The same engineering framework could one day be deployed on satellites or deep-space telescopes. Looking further ahead, integrating adaptive vision models or self-learning cleaning strategies could enable optics that continuously optimize their own performance. Ultimately, this work represents an early step toward fully autonomous, self-maintaining optical instruments.

Enhanced Modeling of Water Electrolysis Propulsion

JC Garcia, Nathan Huynh, Joaquin Phillips, Ziyan Sultan

The development of energy-efficient and low-cost propulsion options for CubeSATs (miniature satellites) is an important are of engineering research. The team observed that an operational hydrogen and oxygen thruster would not only be incredibly efficient, but also easy and safe to store. Their proposed solution? A rocket thruster designed to use water electrolysis to generate propellant.

What makes their idea innovative? Fuel sources such as kerosene, liquid methane and liquid natural gas are dangerous to handle and are not ecologically sustainable. Nonetheless, the use of water as a source of propellant has only been explored by few groups of engineers and companies.

For the team, designing the testing infrastructure was an opportunity to learn every detail of how a thruster behaves, resulting in a system that reflects real-world operating conditions. And in the long term? Ultimately, their aspirations for the project amount to a moonshot. Imagine if refueling of launch vehicles or satellites could be achieved by making use of the frozen water on the surface of the Moon? With access to the Moon, space stations, and other potential sites as fueling stops, human space exploration could advance further into the solar system.

Hinged, Flexible Wingtips for Gust Load Alleviation in Flight

Jonah Colagross, James Kwak, Zachary Law, Yuya Sugo     

Aircraft are sized according to worst-case scenarios – extreme gust conditions being among the most common. Additionally, aircraft with high aspect ratio wings are more fuel-efficient; however, these wings require more material to endure severe load cases, such as gusts.

Previous research has shown that a hinged wing tip reduces the wing root bending moment (WRBM) by generating lift closer to the wing root. This reduction in maximum expected WRBM can lead to a reduction in aircraft weight. Because gusts are often experienced in crosswind or sideslip conditions, the team’s goal was to determine if the hinged folding wingtip could reduce the wing root bending moment even in these flight conditions.

As you might expect, a significant amount of research has been conducted in the field of passive gust load alleviation by major aerospace companies. However, the team noticed that very few studies have examined the concept at sideslip angles. This is an important industry oversight, given that gusts often occur during landing – where crosswinds or sideslip conditions are typically at play.

The team set out to characterize this technology to include these flight conditions – a useful step forward in potentially implementing on future airliners. Just imagine airplanes with longer, slender wings that can flap and hinge during flight….

Characterization of Viscous Dampers through the Development of a Damper Dynamometer

Lucas Dudley, Jingwen Hu, Lilian Le, Char Zhang      

Seniors involved in USC Racing – a student-run team that designs, constructs and races high-performance formula cars – often take advantage of the AME Senior Showcase to optimize the technology of their current racecar prototype.

The opportunity to experiment is all the more important, given that testing is expensive – this team noted that damper testing equipment for motorsports suspension is a case in point (commercial units easily exceed $10,000). That’s why they decided to develop an affordable dynamometer, with the goal of providing greater access to data and thereby enabling empirical modelling which is typically prohibitively expensive.

The project involved characterizing the behavior of nonlinear viscous dampers by developing a low-cost damper dynamometer to allow for repeatable testing across a range of excitations typical of a racing environment. They studied the influence of the damper’s valving (which is used to set target damping rates), temperatures and excitation frequency to develop an empirical model.

The model and damper dynamometer will be used by USC Racing to correlate simulation models to the real world, all while only costing 10% of off the shelf testing equipment. Beyond the showcase, the next stage of development will involve applying the test data to train machine learning models on the transient response of viscous dampers.

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This is just a selection of some of the top projects in this year’s showcase, a testament to the ambition and applicability of the work taking place among undergraduates at AME. To learn more about areas of research at AME, click here.

 

Published on December 19th, 2025

Last updated on December 19th, 2025