The NYU Prototyping Fund is a collaborative program offered by the Design Lab @ NYU Tandon MakerSpace, the Technology Management and Innovation Department, and New York City Future Manufacturing Collective (NYC-FMC), that awards teams of students up to $500 in the first round of funding and up to $2,000 in the second to be used to build hardware or software prototypes, and connects them with the resources, tools, and mentors they need to bring their ideas to life and move to the next stage of product development, while encouraging multidisciplinary collaboration between students at NYU. This semester, 12 teams were selected to represent 6 NYU schools, totaling to almost $4,000 dollars!
On Wednesday, October 7th, the cohort met in the NYU MakerSpace’s Design Lab to kick off the program. During this session, we discussed various prototyping techniques as well as “why” and “how” to prototype. Participating teams are working on projects ranging from building an autonomous drone that picks up trash, to creating a healthcare-oriented VR game, and developing NYU’s first nanosatellite through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. While some teams are working on physical prototypes and others digital – the principles of early testing, asking questions, and learning from users apply to all of the projects. We encouraged the teams to use prototypes as a method to fail safely (and cheaply) and ultimately, to begin testing as soon as possible.
Learn more about the cohort below. We are excited to see what these teams build, how they creatively test, and get user feedback while using design thinking techniques!
Meet the teams!
Trashy Wheels: Sustainable Skateboarding Wheels: Trashy Wheels collects and converts recyclable plastics into high-performance wheels for pedestrian conveyances, such as skateboarding, and commercial and industrial carts. Joseph Bishop
Psychloroma: Building a healthcare-oriented VR game where you can control an avatar/environment using dry electrode BCI headset (Emotiv Insight) and AI to decode the motor imagery and visual cortex imagery from the brainwave data. Sounak Ghosh, Lucas Wozniak, Zikang (Jack) Chen, Lilly Lin, Priya Ganguly, & Shinnosuke Komiya
Communil: Creating proprietary scannable barcode matrices (similar to a QR code) in conjunction with software to act as a bridge between the students of the NYU community. Jonathan Gao & Dimash Shubay
Smart Stress Buddy: Creating a stress absorbing device that helps mitigate and reduce stress level. Lauren Chun & Tarun Sharma
Portable Sound-Proof Booth for Vocal Training: Building a sound-proof booth that allows for effective vocal training while isolating the environment from the loud sound. Qinsong Guo
Mundare: Building an autonomous drone that flies along a predetermined path on a section of beach, using a video camera and machine learning to detect trash that it encounters and picks it up. Daniel Zhang, Ali Fakhry, & Nick Pham
NYU CubeSat: NYU CubeSat is an interdisciplinary satellite research group dedicated to developing and launching NYU’s first nanosatellite through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. Kavitha Rao, Alex Kelso, Emily Hsieh, Eva Ahmetaj, & Dara Wang
Tandon Made Challenge, Team Air Circulation: Our proposed project consists of an air circulation system that takes care of the transmission of virus indoors and consists of two products: a Folding Air Shower and an Air Circulation Table. SeungHwa Lee, Aleka Raju, & Seoyoung Hong
TJL Investigation: Theo Jansen Linkage (TJL), a kinematic chain designed to mimic the smooth walking of a bipedal animal. Thomas Belinky
new new games: Bringing play and games of all kinds into public spaces, inspired by the ‘New Games Movement’ of the 60s – a utopian project focused on building community through play. Darwin Vickers, Gustavo Ceci Guimaraes, Ty Cobb, Francisco Rojo, & Alise Lim
SURFACE: Simple User-friendly Risk-reduction Following Apropos Cleaning in Environments: To combat local transmission risks for COVID-19 and other pathogens, the SURFACE project aims to develop a fully automatic, three-dimensional (3D) quality control mechanism for ensuring the cleaning of indoor spaces. Winnie Zheng & Kevin Joseph
Fun Guy: Using Fungal mycelium to replace styrofoam packaging and other single use plastic materials. Maria Rehan, Nikareka Muniyasamy, & Alisha Mugunthan
Learn more about the NYU MakerSpace’s funding opportunities.
