First, the airline lost luggage containing crucial components of their design. Next, they had to chase through the unfamiliar streets of Washington, D.C., in search of fishing line needed for their project’s pulleys. Practically sleepless for four days running, they arrived at their hotel past midnight. The stranded project components arrived even later.

Winning first prize at one of the country’s top student design competitions seemed a distant dream for Cal State Northridge mechanical engineering majors Eduardo “Eddy” Ekmekgian, Maurycy Sarosiek and Mario Servin. They checked in and wearily began the all-night job of re-assembling their “floating cabinet” invention in preparation for their first appearance at the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Advancing Hispanic Excellence in Technology, Engineering, Math and Science (AHETEMS) National Design Competition.

By 6:30 a.m., the “floating cabinet” was re-assembled and the presentation fine-tuned, but they still had to get the cabinet—an ingenious assistive technology device that brings inaccessible items within reach—to the competition hall. The hotel staff refused to relinquish a bell cart to the red-eyed CSUN students, so they found a platform and, breathing hard, wheeled it into the hall just in time for their presentation.

Now for the Hollywood Big Finish: Sixth place went to Stanford, fifth place to Cal Poly, fourth to UC Berkeley. The CSUN team began to lose heart. Third place: Cal Poly again. Second place: the University of Virginia.

The three exhausted seniors leapt to their feet when the winner of the $3,000 first place prize was announced. An idea born in CSUN mechanical engineering professor Michael Kabo’s “Machine Design 330” class had achieved national recognition.

“Everyone in the class had had the project assignment to build something that could help disabled people and other users,” said Servin. “We just thought we should help people reach things inside cabinets.”

Their cabinet works by wireless remote. “All you have to do is push a button,” said Ekmekgian, “and you can lower the cabinet to the desired height. The whole cabinet floats.”

The theme for the 2009 AHETEMS competition was “adaptive assistive technologies,” and the charge was to create “a commercially marketable product that has both a unique social benefit and improves…quality of life, especially for the Hispanic community.”

Classmate Hector Perez, SHPE vice regional representative, had pushed the team to enter. “I really thought they could get out there and win.”

So did engineering faculty Kabo, C.T. Lin, Robert Ryan and Tarek Shraibati. “We were able to bounce our ideas off them,” said Maurycy.

Those ideas may lead to a very marketable product. The three seniors soon will navigate their way to a patent on the “floating cabinet” design. Stay tuned.

Visit www.ecs.csun.edu/ecs/ for more on CSUN’s engineering projects.

— Joseph O'Connor

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