SIE students go for gold at 2025 Craig M. Berge Design Day
Team 25048’s golf-putting robot Gopher combines the fun of sports and the power of engineering to swing a hole-in-one with two shots or fewer.
Thousands of attendees gathered on May 5 for the College of Engineering's 2025 Craig M. Berge Design Day – an annual opportunity for engineering seniors to present the results of their yearlong capstone class in the Student Union Memorial Center ballroom and on the University of Arizona mall. Students from majors across the college made up 79 multidisciplinary teams that completed projects requested by industry and university sponsors.
Provoking curiosity in STEM
The $7,500 top prize, the Craig M. Berge Dean’s Award for Most Outstanding Project, went to Team 25048 for Gopher, a golf-putting robot. Its goal: to demonstrate engineering concepts in a way that inspires K-12 students to consider pursuing careers in the engineering field.
Team members took Gopher to Catalina Foothills High School and Sahuaro High School before Design Day presentations. In addition to playing with Gopher’s high-accuracy putting, the high schoolers were introduced to the engineering process.
“We also walked them through our design process of getting a product from A to Z, because I had never been exposed to that process until this class,” said team lead Evan Shiel, an industrial engineering senior.
Using AI to improve health care
Team 25033 employed artificial intelligence to improve medical care in developing countries. The group created MD-Sensei, an AI-powered smartphone application that delivers science-backed clinical guidance based on thousands of medical documents.
“This is something that will be used in remote areas, and the sponsor wants a medical doctor that may not have available training to have access to an AI that may be able to help them and fill gaps,” said team member Cameron Brown, a software and systems engineering senior.