The Student Design Consultancy program is among dozens of ways at Iowa State for design students like Aleka Hickman to innovate — and make a difference in the world while they’re doing it.
You’re an industrial design student with zero experience in agriculture and you get offered an opportunity to work with swine. What do you do?
If you’re Aleka Hickman, you jump at the chance.
The recent Iowa State graduate led a Student Design Consultancy team helping to refine the design of an effective, cost-efficient tracheal swab to test for mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, a bacteria that causes serious illness in pigs. The swab is one component of a tracheal sampling device under development at the College of Veterinary Medicine that could save producers considerable time and money.
“The treatment is expensive. Ideally, you’d do 30 to 60 tests every month in order to isolate swine with this illness. The tools currently available are pretty diverse and not designed to be used for this test,” Aleka says. “With our work, we’re hoping to ease the testing process and encourage farms to do consistent testing.”
Start with deep research
Dr. Maria Clavijo, a research associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine who leads the project, is impressed with Aleka and her team.
“You could tell that she did deep background reading on the topic, had lined up multiple pertinent questions for me and then provided solutions for the constraints we had so far with the existing prototype. She was knowledgeable on not only design and materials, but also provided new ideas on how to sample pigs more efficiently,” Clavijo says. “The team’s turnaround was also pretty impressive. Within two months, I already had a new prototype in my hand.”
Partner for impact
A partnership with Iowa State’s Office of Innovation Commercialization, the Student Design Consultancy program enables students to work alongside university researchers on real-world, high-impact projects.
—Aleka Hickman
The program is among dozens of ways at Iowa State — from project-oriented courses and hands-on research, to product development assistance and internships with design changemakers — for design students like Aleka to “Start Something” and make a difference in the world while they’re doing it.
The Student Design Consultancy “changed how I perceive professional design,” Aleka says. “It helped me transition from feeling strictly like a student into a professional. It also demystified what working in the design field is like. Turns out, it’s pretty similar to what we’ve been taught, which is very reassuring.”
