Fluid Innovation

This School of Engineering Senior Design Conference team won the Humanitarian Award of 2020, helping a school in South Africa build a hydroponic garden via video chat.

Though a global pandemic made travelling to South Africa to build a hydroponic gardening system on-site impossible, one School of Engineering Senior Design Conference team still delivered. Winning the Engineering Humanitarian Award, teammates Andrew Feldmeth, Alex Estrada, Claire Pavelka, Andrew Jezak, Katya Fairchok, all ’20, and Carson Edgerton ’21, worked with a South African high school via video chat to build a system that filters greywater from the kitchen to grow produce without the need for soil. They also built a working prototype at campus’ Forge Garden, which produced lettuce that was donated to local food-insecure families.

post-image Helping a school in South Africa build a hydroponic garden via video chat ends with an engineering Humanitarian Award. / Image stock.
Spin Masters

In searching for patterns that would differentiate one species of webspinners from the next, Professor Janice Edgerly-Rooks wondered: What if you put their steps to music? Would you be able to hear the differences?

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Santa Clara’s signature red has been around since the late 1800s. Before it was made official, though, we were almost the blue Broncos.

Unspooling Stories

Art historian Andrea Pappas explores the sneaky feminism woven into colonial embroideries.

The Pope, AI, and Us

Santa Clara’s Markkula Center joins the Vatican in contemplating—what else?—the ethics of AI and other disruptive tech.