Welcome to Design Expo, Michigan Tech's annual showcase for experiential, discovery-based learning. It's our 23rd year of showcasing the work of over 1,000 students from our Senior Design and Enterprise programs. They address practical, open-ended design challenges, work with clients in a business-like setting, and pioneer solutions. Teams display their work on a wide range of projects—building race cars, providing sustainable solutions, tackling complex industry problems with advanced technologies, using machine learning to program autonomous vehicles, and much more.
At Michigan Tech, we proudly refer to Senior Design as a “first job” rather than a “last class” tasking project teams to address engineering challenges. In Enterprise, larger multidisciplinary organizations of first-year through graduate-level students work directly with clients in a business-like setting to create products, deliver services, and pioneer solutions. Regardless of the pathway our students choose, they get valuable experience that prepares them for early career success. And the employers of our graduates know it, too!
Design Expo features student teams from all five Colleges at Michigan Tech: Business, Computing, Engineering, Forest Resources and Environmental Science, and Sciences and Arts. We are also hosting high school students from local schools to join in and get excited about the possibilities in their future!
On display at Design Expo you’ll find our students' spirit of imagination, innovation, and collaboration. As you talk with them, their projects and their level of dedication are sure to impress!
Design Expo 2023 is generously supported by industry and university sponsorship. We are grateful for all our sponsors who have made a strategic investment in our educational mission. Thank you!
Thank you for attending the 2023 Design Expo, and Go, Huskies!
Nagesh Hatti
- Director, The Enterprise Program and Chair, Enterprise Governing Board
- Advisor, ITOxygen
- nhatti@mtu.edu
- 906-487-2633
- M&M 722F
Leonard Bohmann
- Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
- Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
- ljbohman@mtu.edu
- 906-487-2861
- M&M 703
Design Expo highlights hands-on, discovery-based learning at Michigan Tech.
During the event, which is hosted by the Enterprise Program and the College of Engineering, more than a thousand students in Enterprise and Senior Design teams showcase their work and compete for awards. A panel of judges, made up of distinguished corporate representatives, Michigan Tech staff and faculty members, and community members, critique the projects and determine the award winners.
Many team projects are sponsored by industry. This allows students to gain direct exposure to real industrial problems and form valuable relationships with potential future employers as they pursue co-ops, internships, and full-time jobs. Employers benefit from these relationships, as well, and have consistently expressed how valuable the program has been for their recruitment efforts.
Students at Michigan Tech have been presenting their innovative designs at Design Expo since it began in 2000. Since then, winning designs have included a microscale process to fix pacemakers in place, a nanosatellite to image atmospheric clouds and reconcile climate models, and an advanced PPE filtration system to protect surgeons against COVID-19 and other airborne viruses.
Tomorrow needs new solutions and agile thinkers. It needs champions of the unknown. Design Expo brings student teams, industry partners, campus mentors, and the community together to explore a year’s worth of innovation—the products, processes, and breakthroughs that tomorrow needs.