Week of 2/21/11

This week we had no formal meeting with our mentor and instead focused on completing many of the goals we have due in the coming weeks. At our first meeting of the week we decided to tackle some of these goals by breaking into the subgroups that had goals due the soonest. The subgroups whose goals we decided to work on were the Marketing and Materials and Building teams. The Marketing team worked on organizing the information we have about the different costs related to the cold chain in a more efficient manner, as well as finding a template for a marketing plan that we hope to have finished before the end of the semester. The Materials and Building team was focused on compiling a list of the necessary materials that will need to be ordered.

For our second meeting of the week, we decided to meet at the usual time that we would have met with Dr. Shah. Again, we broke into subgroups. Kelly and Matt worked on COMSOL some more, hoping to have success after the Tuesday breakthrough that came with the help of Dr. Kim. The rest of the team discussed our goal of having our Thesis Paper written by the end of the semester. We decided that everyone should have their respective parts of the paper done before Spring Break, so that we can have a first draft compiled and ready to edit after we get back from break. We also discussed the possibility of attending the Unite for Sight Global Health and Innovation Conference, taking place April 16th & 17th at Yale University. The conference is $125 per person and the deadline to register at this price is Monday, so we must decide on this matter quickly. If we wish to register we must also submit a proposal to Gemstone ASAP. We hope to be able to send at least two or three members of our team to this conference.

We look forward to having Dr. Shah back next week and discussing everything we were able to accomplish.
Let's keep up the good work team!

-Anthony

COMSOL hope??

So Matt and I were able to meet with Dr. Jungho Kim to discuss our COMSOL modeling problem. Turns out he was able to give us a different, super simple solution within a minute! Basically he is saying that, even though the temperature stays constant during melting, we can treat it as having occurred over a very small temperature difference. We can then use that difference to relate the material's heat capacity to the heat of fusion (energy=mcdT=mL). Translation: genius. There are still a few mechanics and the actual implementation to work out, but I'm excited to see where this goes!

Take-home point: always ask for help.

- Kelly

2/18 Mentor meeting

This week we were able to send off our NSF proposal! It took a lot of time and muscle, but we are very happy with how it turned out and look forward to seeing what comes of it.

During our meeting, we spent some time discussing how the proposal development process went before Dr. Thomas and Dr. Wallace (members of the Gemstone staff) came to sit in on our meeting. We gave them a general recap on our project and also updates on where we were with it. They were encouraging that we should begin to consider the end of our project, in that we may want to present at conferences or write an academic paper. It is certainly something to think about! All in all I think they were pleased with our progress, but there's still plenty to get cracking on.

With that, we turned our focus towards goals we still needed to complete, including looking into prototype materials and manufacturing; researching other markets where our product could have application; testing other PCMs; working on the COMSOL model/simulation; continuing the icebox experiments; and working on our thesis. I'm pretty stoked to see all of these things come together and can't wait to get a prototype going.

Next week we are foregoing our mentor meeting, since Dr. Shah has to be out, and we're going to do some serious work on these goals. Get excited!

-Kelly

P.S. Matt was awesome and updated our website - check it out!
http://teams.gemstone.umd.edu/classof2012/fresh/

Submitted!

And now, we wait. Nice work.

-sameer

Almost there...

The NSF proposal is in its home stretch. Team FRESH has done a phenomenal job pulling together experimental and theoretical data, devising a credible experimental plan, and emphasizing the public health relevance of their work. They've also described their outreach efforts with BCCHS and EHRS in excellent detail. The Team FRESH Blog even makes a couple of cameos!

This proposal will be competing with proposals from world-class research groups in bioengineering, mechanical engineering, and materials science... and I think it will hold its own.

Great work and good luck!

Sameer

Feb. 10th Mentor Meeting

This week we focused on the NSF proposal. After our non mentor meeting, we sent our draft to Dr. Shah, which he edited and talked about at our mentor meeting. We still had to add the figures and some of the references. Dr. Shah stressed that the first two pages were essential in establishing what the project was about and why it is important. Therefore, we had to cut out most of the background part, and focus more on the scientific and societal significance. Then, we decided how we were going to go about editing the paper. We decided that we would edit in teams at different times, so each team would only have to look at one set of edits, instead of one person trying to compile four sets. The proposal must be submitted by Tuesday morning, so we planned to have it edited by the end of this weekend. After discussing the proposal, we took some time to talk about the overall structure for this semester. Every subgroup will update their progress weekly on the blog, even if they do not have anything substantial to report. Also, we have some icebox experiments scheduled to be done next week, and we are trying to update our literature review, as some articles on vaccine refrigeration have come out in the past few months. Next week is our meeting with Dr. Wallace and Dr. Thomas, so are going to spend some time next week preparing for that at our non mentor meeting.

Ravi Vaswani

Feb. 7th Nonmentor Meeting

At our Nonmentor Meeting this week, we focused on updating and editing our NSF proposal. We spent time working on writing our respective portions and adding in references as needed. We had to overhaul the basic structure of the proposal because it was not conveying what we wanted it to focus on. After we worked on it, it now emphasizes our experimental work, such as the modeling with COMSOL and the icebox experiments. At the end, we sent this version to Dr. Shah for his review and submission to the university. We are going to meet Thursday to finalize the proposal.

Ravi

FRESH Start!

Thanks to Divya who took the minutes before I arrived! The meeting was scheduled at the Engineering Building, not the Kim Building. Today, I learned that the Engineering Building is a part of the Math Building, and isn't in the Kim Building. Anyways..about our meeting!

Here's a brief recap of our meeting:
1) Outreach Program at BCC: Students interested in learning more about our project will get back to Amanda by February 15th, 2011 to determine when they can come and visit us.
2) NSF Proposal:
- Dr. Shah went over his edits and for our NSF proposal. The biggest problem was the little attention to scientific background, and too much justifications/broad impacts. We need more analysis on the technical components of our research, such as the implementation of the PCMs, geometry of integration of the ice box, and what is novel about what we are doing?
- We need to include references! Our rough draft only had three references. This is an anomaly from the other papers we've written which had more than enough.
- Dr. Hwang has agreed to put his name on our proposal. He will need to look over the paper before we submit it to NSF.
- We will be submitting our edited NSF proposal back to Dr. Shah by Tuesday, February 8, 2011.
3) Syllabus:
- Currently, we have very few goals after March. We must make it a priority to set more goals for the rest of the semester. By March 20th, 2011, we must set new goals for the semester.
- Marketing subgroup needs more goals. It should be their goal to add details of the marketing plan, such as finding a template.
- Blog Updates: The Minutes Keeper for the week posts minutes for both meetings and updates the blog. For subgroups, each member will rotate to see who posts on the blog that week.
- Attendance Policy: 2 excused/scheduled absences are allowed. If you are 20 minutes late, it counts as 1 unexcused absence
4) Deadlines:
- February 17,2011 - Finish the previous goals we have before Rebecca and Dr. Wallace (Gemstone staff) comes to visit
- March - Before the students from BCC come to visit, we must complete the goals regarding the icebox experiments. We want to share with the students the experiment experience we have.
- Spring Break - Prepare the end-of-the-semester deadlines, prepare to build the prototype, and finish writing parts of the Thesis so we can edit when we come back from break.
- April 22, 2011 - Undergraduate Research Day - Chance to share our research with the school
5) Miscellaneous
- Non-mentor meetings will take place on Tuesdays, from 10pm-11pm
- The Sensors Subgroup will change to the Materials/Building Subgroup
- Mentor Meetings will be at 3:45PM

This semester, we are hoping that there is more fluidity amongst the sub-groups. We want to make sure everyone everyone is participating. If you find yourself doing nothing, bring it up at the mentor/non-mentor meeting. We should all strive to do something to help our research progress.

Looking forward to a great semester!

-Young

First Non-Mentor of the New Semester!

All the members survived the "snowstorm," and we had our first non-mentor meeting for the new semester! As the semester begins, we immediately set out to work on our Gemstone project. The very first goal was to edit the syllabus for our team. Before we got started, we had to share some good news. We now own a Greenbox to run tests, and we found a group of students from Chevy Chase HS that are willing to come and visit us to gain some lab experience.

Some changes to the syllabus include:

- Reinstatement of the late fee. The penalty will be $0.25/min for a maximum of $5

- Every member is allowed two mentor/non-mentor schedule absences

- Keeping up with blogs

• The Minutes Keeper for the week is responsible for posting on the blog twice a week after the non-mentor, and mentor meetings.
• Each subgroup will update the blog after their meetings. Members in the subgroup will rotate to see who posts on the blog.

Expect a lot more of posts from Team FRESH!

-Young