Our world has experienced nothing short of a technological revolution throughout the last century. We have refrigerators that can store and extend the shelf life of food, new modes of transportation that can carry us across the world in a day, robots and drones that can exceed human capabilities, and phones that let us access almost all the knowledge in the world with a few clicks. The list of technological marvels only continues to grow as we learn new skills and discover new information. If you were tasked with identifying the different types of engineers who developed these technologies, you might think of mechanical, electrical, civil, or maybe even software engineers. However, there is one field of engineering that is critical for the success of others, but is often overlooked. Materials scientists and engineers have played key roles in all of these projects, however, many people are completely unaware of what materials engineers do, or even that they exist at all!

According to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UMD, “Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) combines engineering, physics and chemistry principles to solve real-world problems associated with nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, energy, manufacturing and other major engineering disciplines.” Essentially, materials engineering is very important to the continuous development of new technologies and materials engineers are crucial members of a tech development team. So, we now know that materials engineers are critical for the success of any project, but the question remains: What is materials engineering?

According to Hadas Elazar-Mittelman, a senior in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and a member of Cohort 30, “Materials engineering is trying to take what we know about chemistry and physics and apply this basic knowledge to manipulate materials to behave in a certain way, meaning to ensure that the material possesses properties needed for whatever the application.” For example, airplanes must withstand high wind pressure, be resistant to large changes in temperature, and be durable to last for the multiple take-offs and landings that happen every day. A materials engineer would use their knowledge about how a material responds to pressure, temperature changes, and prolonged use in order to choose the best material for the plane, or even iterate on previous findings to develop a new material. The skill set a materials engineer possesses is vital, especially in fields like electronics that need very specific material behavior in order for advanced technologies like circuits or sensors to function. Hadas went on to quote one of her professors that materials engineering is the “Rosetta Stone of engineering” because materials engineers can talk to almost any type of engineer or technical professional, functioning as a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ when trying to contribute to an effort. The breadth and depth of the materials engineering field makes the discipline very nuanced yet still accessible to every field in engineering. 

The famous saying “you are what you eat” describes how you are only as healthy as you treat your body; a materials engineering analogy could be “you are what you are made of,” meaning that a technology is only able to be efficient, durable, long-lived, and feasible if it is made from the correct materials. Therefore, just like people need doctors to teach them how to properly treat and maintain their bodies, engineering teams need materials engineers in order to create technologies that can succeed and survive the test of time.

“This may sound a little weird, but have you ever experienced a phantom flush?” When Charles Grody (Q29) first asked me this sophomore year, I actually started to laugh! All I could think of was what in the world is a phantom flush and why is this boy, who I met a week ago, so interested in toilets? Charles, used to this response, explained that a phantom flush is when you go to the bathroom, step into the stall, and then out of nowhere – boom – there’s a flush and –  boom – there’s a flush again! Admitting that this has happened to me on multiple occasions, Charles then proceeded to explain that not only is this annoying, but it also wastes money, and more importantly water! At the time, Charles was in the process of creating an idea of how to fix this design flaw. Fast forward a year and now, I am proud to announce, that Charles has developed Hydraze, a water conservation company that is working to design automatic, single flush toilets.

Charles began developing the first prototype of Hydraze through his Entrepreneurial and Innovation Program (EIP) honors program. Thinking about this phantom flush issue, it occurred to Charles that the system failure laid in the design of an automatic sensor detecting the distance a person stands from the toilet. Instead, he thought, the bathroom latch should have an installed flush sensor. Therefore, whenever you open the latch – boom – the toilet flushes ONCE! With this idea, he began to interview facility managers on campus who advised him that while his idea was fantastic, the only way this device would get approved was if it had the same amount of cleanliness of an automatic sensor and if it had a one-year return on investment. During this time, Charles’ idea began gaining a lot of attraction – and he began winning grants from EIP, the Do Good Institute, and the Office of Sustainability. With this money, Charles built two tools: a latch counter and a flush counter. A latch counter counted how many times the bathroom latch was opened from the inside, hence an expected flush, and the flush counter attached to the automatic sensor and counted how many total times the toilet flushed. By subtracting the expected flushes from the total flushes Charles could count the amount of phantom flushes! Through this, Charles was able to gather the data that each toilet wastes about 7200 gallons and $150 a year – but with more data gathered these numbers are predicted to drastically increase. Already, Charles’ device would cost him less than $150. Knowing this, he applied and was accepted to both the Under Armour Sustainability Challenge and the Do Good Challenge.

At the Under Armour Sustainability Challenge in April, Hydraze was part of 8 out of 64 teams selected to pitch to four senior Under Armour Vice Presidents. Not only this, but Hydraze was also only 1 of 2 undergraduate teams selected for this opportunity. After the conference, an Under Armour VP spoke with Charles about visiting their headquarters and speaking about his idea with others. Similarly, at the Do Good Challenge in April, Hydraze was part of 3 out of approximately 60 teams selected as semifinalists. While every innovative idea at the Do Good Challenge was phenomenal, Charles won first place and raised $5000 for his company, Hydraze!

Charles’ ability to define, analyze, and fix a problem truly demonstrates the qualities that QUEST strives to establish within each one of us. We are so very proud of Charles for his achievements thus far, and look forward to watching Hydraze further develop from a startup into a well-known company.  Congratulations Charles, we have no doubt that you will accomplish and achieve anything you set out to do in the future!

My name is Adith Thummalapalli, and I’m a Mechanical Engineering major in Q30! Recently, I helped publish a report outlining accessibility issues and barriers for students with disabilities on campus, called the Campus Accessibility Report. You may have seen it circulating on social media or seen the article that the Diamondback wrote about it. I want to share how this report came about, why I decided to write it, and talk about what everyone working on this “quest” hopes to see moving forward! So here goes.

It all started a little less than a year ago (last September to be precise). One of my best friends was having a birthday party at her apartment in Kent Hall and had started planning it since the end of July. I was planning to go, so to make sure the building was wheelchair accessible, I called ResLife and was told that the entire basement and first floor of Kent was accessible but that the higher floors may not be due to lack of an elevator. To double check, I went on the ResLife website and Kent was indeed designated as having some rooms that were intended for occupation by a student with disabilities. This was at the end of July. However, when move-in day came around at the end of August, my friend told me that she didn’t see a ramp up to the first floor, only 6 steps. So I called ResLife again and spoke to another representative, who told me that Kent was not accessible at all, and when I told her that the ResLife website said it was, she replied, “Oh, then I guess it is then.”

This was my first indication of the lack of communication occurring within ResLife regarding accessibility. After this, I went around taking photographs of the entrances of all the residence halls that claimed to be accessible but were not and researching the ADA Standards and building codes regarding what buildings could claim to be accessible, during which time I remembered another issue I had encountered many times before: inaccessible crosswalks with no curb cuts. So I began researching the ADA Standards related to that and taking photographs of all the crosswalks that did not have curb cuts at one or both ends. I started putting all of this information into a google doc and adding to it whenever I came across other barriers to accessibility around campus, until I eventually put it aside once last semester started getting work-heavy.

It wasn’t until the beginning of this semester that I returned to the document. The first two weeks of the semester, I was unable to get to two of my classes on the 3rd floor of J.M. Patterson due to an elevator upgrade, which was a planned project, but a project that nobody outside of Facilities Management was notified of. The ADS Office on campus, which handles academic accommodations for students with disabilities, was not informed about the project at all. If they had been, they would’ve been able to move my classes for the first two weeks until the project was completed. Luckily, I only missed syllabus week and the first week of content and had friends in the classes whom I got notes from, so it was manageable. I complained to Facilities Management and others about the issue for about a week, and their eventual response was to give me a number to call whenever I needed to use the elevator. The first (and only time) I tried calling the number, a person from Facilities Management took 30 minutes to arrive, at which point class had already begun and was 15 minutes in.

This was the second time I had run into the issue of abysmal communication between campus entities regarding physical barriers to access, and I thought something had to be done about it. So I went to the Diamondback and they published an article about my inability to get to class for two weeks due to scheduled elevator maintenance. After sharing the article on social media, I received an unexpected amount of support from people hearing about the situation and urging me to do something to ensure accountability and better communication between campus entireties. And that’s when Doron Tadmor in Q29 reached out to me. I had taken a non-QUEST class with Doron two semesters ago and knew he was active with SGA. He wanted to sit down and talk about how SGA could help me.

During our conversation, I mentioned my “evidence document,” and he suggested that we turn it into a formal report, submit it to SGA and get their endorsement, and then send it to the campus entities and offices that needed to see it (the Office of the President, Facilities Management, the Office of Administration and Finance, and the Presidents Commission on Disability Issues). For the next month, we worked on turning my mess of evidence into a professional report with the help of an SGA graphics team and additional stories added by other students with disabilities and eventually were ready to present it to SGA and get their endorsement. Thanks to the hard work of the wonderful Jenn Miller, the motion passed unanimously and we had official SGA backing for the Campus Accessibility Report. After that, we shared the report on social media, the Diamondback wrote an article about it, and a local news station (CTV News Prince George’s County) did a story about accessibility barriers at UMD.

Needless to say, this caught the attention of many UMD offices, all of whom contacted myself and SGA with a willingness to discuss the issues that I had never seen before whenever I tried to file complaints on my own. Additionally, the President’s Commission on Disability Issues (PCDI) met with Doron, me, and the other students who contributed to the report and asked if we would be willing to begin a Student Advisory Board for the PCDI to help inform them of accessibility issues that they could then advocate about on the behalf of the students. The first meeting of the PCDI Advisory Board will be at the beginning of next semester.

The amount of support we have received from the student body through social media has been unexpected but wonderful, and I love to see how many people have gotten behind this initiative. The goal was to raise awareness about accessibility barriers and make the issues visible to the student body, because once Terps set their mind to something, they follow it through. The point was not to place blame on anyone, simply to bring attention to the issues and get UMD officials to take action and ACTUALLY DO something about the issues, instead of just sitting and talking about doing something. And that is exactly what has happened.

Moving forward, there are many other issues that were not included in the Accessibility Report, because they would’ve made the report much longer than 23 pages, and we feared people wouldn’t read it if it were too long and complex. That being said, minor reports like this one are in the pipeline for next semester, as are a few events to continue raising awareness about accessibility barriers that are invisible to those without disabilities. I truly appreciate and love the support I’ve gotten from my fellow Terps and others, and I just hope we can keep the momentum up and nudge UMD officials into addressing the issues through instead of just talking.

Adith Thummalapalli is a guest writer for QUESTPress this month. He encourages anyone who wants to learn more or to talk about other accessibility barriers to reach out to him at aditht@gmail.com.