VOLUME 12, NO. 3     MAY 1999

President's IQP Award winners have heart

President Parrish with winners Sheldon and Marcroft.

or their Interactive Qualifying Project, Deborah Marcroft '98 and Heather Sheldon '99 teamed up to design a model of a heart that will enable veterinary students to practice open-chest cardiac massage and could help save animals' lives in the office and the laboratory. The students were rewarded for their efforts with first place in the 1998 President's IQP Awards competition.

Open-chest cardiac massage is used in medical emergencies. Until about seven years ago, veterinary students practiced on live animals in the laboratory, often with loss of life. Since that procedure was discontinued, there was no effective way to teach these students how to massage the heart in this situation. The realistic silicone heart created by Marcroft and Sheldon fills that void. Robert A. Peura, professor of biomedical engineering, served as advisor to the project, which was sponsored by Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine.

Second place winners were seniors Kristopher Babic, Grant Leeds and Michael Borek and junior Stylianos Sidiroglou for "Analysis of Sewer Holes and Canal Wall Damage in Venice, Italy" (advisors, Fred J. Looft III, professor and associate head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Fabio Carrera '84, adjunct instructor of interdisciplinary and global studies).

In a tie for third place, seniors Jonathan Barlow, Jaye Jillson and Christina Watson won for "Solar Energy" (advisor, Chrysanthe Demetry '88, associate professor of mechanical engineering) and seniors Samuel Bradshaw, Jeremy Bragg and Christopher Lautenberger were honored for "Reuse of Secondary Building Materials in the Area of Rotterdam" (advisor, Richard F. Vaz '79, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering).