FEATURE
The Next Century of Spartans
By Cassie Myers
Visions of the future often look like science fiction movies, with everyone in silver jumpsuits and flying cars. Or they’re apocalyptic, featuring fire-and-brimstone hellscapes. But, of course, no one knows what the future will bring.
What we do know is that San José State will be a part of it, as our Spartans help shape the future through patents, scholarship, business ventures, community projects and much, much more. Follow us as we imagine the next century of Spartans.
As Andrew Jenkins, ’21 Political Science, ’23 MS Justice Studies, ’24 MS Interdisciplinary Studies, and Concussion Coach co-founder, states, “San José has a lot of knowledge and a lot of people who want to change the world, and at San José State, we preach and pride ourselves on being the pioneers of change.”
Patents
Spartan inventors are hard at work in various fields, securing patents for potentially revolutionary ideas for the future of science, engineering, medicine and more.
What could this mean for our next century? A great deal. In our idealized, Spartan-led future:
Breastfeeding women have a less painful option for breast pumps, thanks to Lin Jiang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
Elizabeth Skovran, professor of biological sciences, uses her genetically modified bacteria to eat rare earth metals in electronic waste, which researchers then recover and re-use.
New treatments help alleviate painful chemotherapy-induced neuropathy in cancer patients, courtesy of discoveries made in part by Katie Wilkinson, professor of biological sciences.
A modular, full-body exoskeleton with removable and adjustable pieces helps those with mobility issues walk again or gain better control of their bodies, courtesy of Mojtaba Sharifi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
A new medical therapy helps vanquish antibiotic resistant bacteria, thanks in part to Laura Miller Conrad, associate professor of chemistry.
Breastfeeding women have a less painful option for breast pumps, thanks to Lin Jiang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
Elizabeth Skovran, professor of biological sciences, uses her genetically modified bacteria to eat rare earth metals in electronic waste, which researchers then recover and re-use.
A modular, full-body exoskeleton with removable and adjustable pieces helps those with mobility issues walk again or gain better control of their bodies, courtesy of Mojtaba Sharifi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
AI and Adaptive Devices
As anyone in Silicon Valley has heard ad nauseam, artificial intelligence is the wave of the future. As a tool, AI has great potential and countless applications, from medicine to business to engineering and beyond.
So if we project into the next century of Spartans, we know AI and adaptive devices will play a role, although we don’t know precisely what that role will be. Professors and student entrepreneurs currently exploring AI may bring more questions, projects and inventions forward.
Some of these may include:
Project Firewatch’s fire-detection software, which uses machine-learning to help determine a wildfire’s trajectory. Huston Scharnagl, ’24 Aerospace Engineering, and Sofia Silva, ’24 Software Engineering, who spearheaded the project, have high hopes for its future.
“A lot of us think the software is a great individual product and we’d love to see them refine and actually produce this individual product because it could save millions of lives,” Scharnagl says.
“I hope that this will eventually help people,” Silva agrees. “Going into this, I never expected our senior design project to blow up like it did.
“But seeing all of this work pay off through competitions and seeing the work acknowledged by people is very rewarding in itself. Regardless of where this project goes, I still want to develop it and make it better than it is. I’m very excited.”
Project Firewatch and Concussion Coach team representatives at the Sunstone CSU Startup Launch Competition. Photo courtesy of Michael Ashley.
“Seeing all of this work pay off through competitions and seeing the work acknowledged by people is very rewarding in itself. Regardless of where this project goes, I still want to develop it and make it better than it is. I’m very excited.”
— Sofia Silva
Concussion Coach, a wearable device roughly the size of a quarter that helps determine when football players may be at risk of concussion, is the anchor of a Spartan-led startup organization that has now won three startup competitions. The product is currently on track to be prototyped and potentially even available to consumers in about a year. They hope to integrate AI into the device’s algorithm in future iterations.
The device contains a nine axis accelerometer that measures the acceleration your head receives when moving certain directions and then calculates the force to evaluate the potential for concussion.
The medical standard threshold for concussion is 90 Gs of force. “And so if you receive that force in the helmet region, since its adhesive sticker sticks on the back of any helmet, you would be alerted by a red light,” explains Andrew Jenkins, one of Concussion Coach’s co-founders and a former Spartan football player.
The device also “smartly adapts” to avoid second impact syndrome, since once a player’s been hit, a second concussion can happen at a much lower force. “So now it's shining red at maybe 40 Gs, 30 Gs, whatever that smart threshold is,” Jenkins says.
The Concussion Coach team recently filed paperwork to turn their project into a limited liability corporation, or LLC, to push the idea even further.
“It's something we're really passionate about,” Jenkins says. “The game of football is forever changing, but it's something that we don't want to see go away. And on top of that, this is technology that could truly change how we operate in certain sectors.”
Beyond football, he lists examples of other possible applications: for kids with cerebral palsy, it could potentially track their neck movement to monitor their therapies’ effectiveness, or in the construction industry it could warn workers of potential concussion risks.
“We definitely see this device really taking off,” Jenkins concludes.
Top photo: Laura Miller Conrad works with a student researcher in her lab. Photo by Robert C. Bain.
Washington Square: San José State University's Magazine © 2024. All Rights Reserved