RESEARCH PROJECTS
This is a collection of the research projects that I have worked on over the past several years.
SEB
(Shark Exclusion Barrier)
The image on the left depicts the SEB deployed off the coast of Cape Cod.
In the beach and surfing communities across the world, the fear of shark attack is always a prevalent fear at the forefront of people’s minds. The innate human fear of the apex marine predator has prompted the use of shark nets, drumlines, and subsidized shark fishing near many public beaches known to be thriving shark habitats.
The novel Shark Exclusion Barrier (SEB) aims to aid this issue by providing a humane, long-lasting, and sturdy way to preclude sharks from beaches frequented by humans. The SEB utilizes magnetic fields and visual deterrents to repel sharks instead of killing them. The electric currents generated by the magnets overwhelm the sharks’ sensory systems.
I took part in this study, under the guidance of Dr. Craig O’Connell, and aided in the writing of the published research paper.
Pneumatic
claw
(NYU TANDON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING: AI4CE LABORATORY)
I designed the components of a pneumatic hand on CAD for a different project in the same AI4CE Lab at NYU Tandon. This project aimed to use pneumatically activated fingers to create grippers with heightened dexterity. The elongated gray semi circles are the fingers, which would flex under the pressure of pumped air. I designed all of the blue parts as structures to hold the fingers and pump.
BRuVs
(Baited Remote Underwater Video SystemS)
Surprisingly, we know very little about sharks. For example, scientists know extremely little about the location of great white shark nursing areas. I discovered this while on a shark conservation and research vessel in the early summer of 2022. I was astonished to find out that there has never been a Great White shark birth documented, let alone filmed. On this vessel, amongst many, one of the instruments used to video sharks was BRUVS. These were simple PVC pipe contraptions that have a fish carcass and GoPro attached to them, that sat on the seafloor. It was quite primitive, as out of 2 hours of film, there would only be a few minutes of relevant film that actually had sharks in it.
So, of course, I engineered a solution to increase the contraption’s filming efficiency. I did this by building a mechanism which turns on the camera only when a shark is present using a sonar, as well as creating a thermal capsule, in order to conserve the battery of the camera.
The second model of this device was tested in the pool (see bottom right). The third model (see top right) was tested in Montauk in the summer of 2024.
MAZE NAVIGATION
via vpr
(NYU TANDON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING: AI4CE LABORATORY)
Turtlebot robot navigating a portion of the larger 15x15 ft maze using Visual Place Recognition (VPR) AI. This technology’s purpose is to eventually be implemented in any type of autonomous machine that has to navigate a space without the help of a 3rd party like GPS. Much like the way a human would navigate a room, a robot using VPR uses visual cues and landmarks to remember where it is relative to the space around it.
This internship was my first experience in the field of collegiate robotics research. I was struck by how different it is from competitive robotics like FTC. The projects were slower paced, but had a greater sense of purpose.
LIchen
as a marker for Pollution
In this research project which was organized by a class at school, some friends and I tried to determine whether or not vehicle pollution affected the number of lichen species present in a park in the Bronx, New York. The park contains a large highway and is highly exposed to vehicle emissions. Airborne compounds present in vehicle emissions presumably harm lichen and limit its growth. Different lichen species have different tolerances towards harmful compounds such as Sulfur Dioxide and Nitrogen nutrients, which are emitted by vehicles. In addition, we also identified which species were more tolerant to pollution and which species were less tolerant by extracting the DNA from our samples.