I peruse a number of interesting projects from pourable bandages for burn wounds to a course organization software that looks much better than what I remember my tuition paying another University for. Silly conflicts of interest and all that garbage. There are two projects on vehicle automation, one of which has a fairly impressive live demonstration where a robot avoids incoming projectiles almost every single time. The wall detection needs some significant refinement, and the team did mention some of their plans for remedies. One project was working on making solar panels more efficient, a desire close to my own heart, and had a fun name to boot.
"Nanostructured diffuse reflector for thin-film silicon solar cells." I read the heading aloud as I raise an eyebrow.
"It's a fancy way of saying paint." Replies the student, explaining that it is a type of paint which is designed with nanite-sized precision to scatter light in a very specific pattern. There is also a group there with an idea called the Flux Capacitor, I kid you not.

I happen to notice a number of projects that are using a phenomena known as hydrophobicity to improve on a number of existing products. I look over projects that intend to make water goggles fog less easily and refrigerator coils more efficient and easily maintainable. WATICE intends to protect our power lines, and they explained the phenomena best.
"...[hydrophobicity] causes the water to form more of a drop-like shape in order to minimize its contact with the surface [...water droplets] will just roll off the surface very easily" explains Drew of the visually impressive WATICE booth. The have short lengths of bare cable lines that they let guests pour water onto. The water seeps into the untreated cable fairly easily, but on the demonstration power line, the water simply bounces off like tiny basketballs in a gymnasium. This backs up the video they have playing which shows sheets of aluminum taken from a freezer. Ice has stuck to the normal sample, but little ice balls slide off the aluminum sheet with the slightest tap.
"[...] the water runs off really easily, only smaller drops stay on the surface because they're not heavy enough to slide off under their own weight, but once more raindrops hit that, they slide off just as easily."

There are simply too many great projects to go over them all in detail here, and after the large number of interviews I had, I will need to make this a multipart series. Therefore, this is a brief overview and only a taste of some of the content that will be here in no time!