By Dennis Walikainen, senior editor

At 10 a.m., the senior Tech students standing near their presentations are nervous. Judges are circling, writing down comments, asking questions and, well, judging.

From what I saw, they need not worry.

Michigan Tech's best and brightest were dressed up, prepared and ready to discuss their myriad research topics. Blue Marble Security was typical, if you can call any of the presenters that.

This Enterprise team is working on eight different projects, including New Power Tour, which, Project Manager Ryan Goddard explained, is investigating a portable sound stage for musicians or whomever. "It will use solar, wind and biodiesel power," Goddard says. "We will be able to charge batteries to run the sound equipment when we change from one power source to another" and on those cloudy days when solar doesn't cut it.

Goddard and his team are also learning the realities of research and invention: they need money to run the project to its conclusion, and they've got a grant in to NSF to help them continue.

Other Blue Marble projects range from Voltair, a wind turbine that sits atop the Electrical Energy Resource Center and means to bring wind power to households; to AquaScan 365, a water contamination detection system that is looking at drinking water in Houghton, Hancock, Calumet and Grand Rapids; to Pathfinder, which seeks to automate lighting on the Tech Trails so they can be used for nighttime cross-country skiing, biking and running.

The Blue Marble presentation itself was a work of wonder: spotlights, beams, posters, black backdrops and a neon sign let everyone know where they were located.

Less audacious but no less important was the work of the Infant Heart Rate Monitor Team. Working with a pediatrician, they are attempting to discern the difference in heart beats in infants from developing and developed nations. Their ultimate goal is to help stop Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Their sensor strap was miniaturized from a normal athletic heart-rate monitor, and it fed info to a wristwatch, which in turn beamed the numbers to an infrared receptor hooked up to a laptop. All three students, Gizem Zorba, Matthew Nielsen and Joseph Prestegaard, could see continuing in this type of work after graduating and/or pursuing it in graduate school, including here at Tech.

And their advisor, Keat Ong, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, was the ultimate team player: she gave birth to a child during the project, and the team tested their device on "a real baby."

And this team, too, learned more life, and work, lessons. "We are learning all about deadlines and budgets," Prestegaard said. And succeeding at both, I bet.

Blue Marble website