Engineering grad named tops in class of 2012

Amir Mehrabi, who completed his B.A.Sc. in electrical engineering in August 2011, received the 2012 Governor General’s Silver Medal, given at Spring Convocation to the undergraduate student who has achieved the highest academic standing in the graduating class.

Mehrabi was awarded an NSERC Undergraduate Student Award which he used to study biomedical imaging, working with a graduate student under the supervision of a senior faculty member to develop algorithms for classifying mammograms. He also worked with a group of students to develop an autonomous vehicle that could navigate itself through a track and recognize obstacles.

Mehrabi’s capstone team project involved the design of a bionic hand. Team members were shown a video of a bionic hand in operation and were tasked with designing a similar product using skills and knowledge acquired during their years of undergraduate studies.

The students successfully designed the hand’s mechanics; wrist sensors to pick up user hand gestures; micro drives; a microcontroller and software to operate the hand. The final product worked flawlessly to achieve a variety of gestures by taking inputs from six pressure sensors sewn in the hand’s wrist band.