Anastasia Cunningham and Anthony Bloch demonstrate their senior project.
The design partners recently presented before graduating in May on their project — a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscope — a device that could target hydrogen proteins.
“It’s been a lot of research,” Cunningham said of the project.
Now graduated, the Cunningham and Bloch are taking the skills they’ve learned at St. Cloud State, including the Senior Design project, to their new jobs at NASA and General Dynamics Mission Systems respectively.
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“It’s been a lot of research,” Cunningham said of the project.
Now graduated, the Cunningham and Bloch are taking the skills they’ve learned at St. Cloud State, including the Senior Design project, to their new jobs at NASA and General Dynamics Mission Systems respectively.
Senior Design is a year-long, two semester class required of all students graduating from electrical and computer engineering. The course consists of a small-group design project and submission of written reports and oral presentations on the design. The students worked with Professor Yi Zheng on their project, which was funded through a stipend through a grant Zheng is working on.
In developing their project, the pair needed to explore new ways to use the magnets, coils and other components of their prototype.
That’s what is making the experience interesting, Bloch said.
“The physics are very complicated,” he said. “I think I understand them well enough, but there’s nobody really to back that up.”
Physics explain the way the magnets affect the molecules and what the response should be, Cunningham said.
“We were running into things that we never realized were factors before, she said. “The project became a lot of just defining what does the system need for the best chance of success.”
What they ended up with was a preliminary prototype that could detect water in a test tube. The next step would be to take what they developed this year and print it onto a circuit board to see if it could detect fluids in larger objects, Cunningham said.
The pair needed to figure out ways to increase the intensity of the magnetic field to amplify the whole system more and lower noise components — redesigning much of their project from one semester to the next.
The project allowed Bloch and Cunningham to explore on their own and find solutions under the guidance of their professors. Their professors didn’t have the answers to their questions, but instead acted as advisors in the best approach to a solution or where to seek the answers.
“It was just working with other people to figure out problems,” Cunningham said.
Their finished project as presented is still very much a concept.
Cunningham believes the Senior Design experience has given her the chance to grow as a researcher and as an engineer.
“It’s definitely an amazing talking point for a job interview because if they ask about something I worked on recently I can talk for hours about all the different parts of this project and putting it together,” she said. “It’s not just the technical experiences we’re getting. We did so much with teamwork and time management planning — project management, doing presentations creating budgets and meeting with management.”
Bloch agrees.
“It wasn’t necessarily the fun project to do,” he said. “But I think it’s been a better growing experience because of that.”
Bright futures
Engineering majors Anastasia Cunningham and Anthony Bloch graduated this May and each have new jobs lined up.
Anastasia Cunningham and Anthony Bloch have bright futures ahead after commencement May 10.
Cunningham is heading to NASA in Cleveland, Ohio, where she will be sworn in to the executive branch of the government as an electrical engineer working on control systems.
She’s looking forward to using her skills in service to others.
“General futurology is where I want to be putting my energy,” she said. “That’s the kind of impact that I would feel really good about leaving in the world.”
Bloch will work for General Dynamics Mission Systems in Bloomington, where he will put his research skills to good use as an entry-level computer engineer.
“At the end of the day, I want to be doing engineering that’s a little bit more worthwhile,” he said.
Bloch was introduced to General Dynamics Mission Systems at the College of Science and Engineering job fair and then interned for the company last summer. He’s been working part-time there through the school year.
Cunningham also had internships that helped her decide her next step after graduation.
Interning in IT with Hennepin County showed her that she wanted to work in government and serve others, while interning at IBM showed her that a career that used her engineering skills was the way to go, she said.
The soon to be NASA engineer started her college career at Minneapolis Community and Technical College studying film studies.
She made her way to engineering by first taking an algebra class that showed her how much she loves math. She moved into statistics and then after transferring to St. Cloud State moved into to mechanical engineering, computer engineering and finally electrical engineering.
