Industrious collaborations
Companies get fresh ideas, students get real-world experience
Inside their workspace in the expansive basement of ClimateHaven on Chapel Street, the student team of Nikolai Stephens-Zumbaum, Phil Boctor, Derek Denehy, and Emerson Harris show off the latest iteration of their prototype. It’s a device for a startup that’s aiming to revolutionize how affordable homes are built using 3D printing of concrete.
It’s one of several ongoing student-industry collaborations at Yale Engineering. Others include projects with the semiconductor giant ASML. Students are also working with Johnson & Johnson Vision Care on mechanical characterization of the company’s contact lenses. Another student is working with the startup Defense Operations & Engineering Solutions on developing a platform that can provide accurate tamper-resistant data to ensure the security and safety of nuclear energy facilities. In recent years, these partnerships have proven popular with both companies and undergraduate mechanical engineering students.
“The students have advocated for these collaborations,” said Corey O’Hern, professor and chair of the mechanical engineering department. “Many mechanical engineering students want interactions with companies prior to graduation. These interactions can lead to potential internships during their time at Yale and after they graduate, which can lead to potential permanent positions.”
The benefits go both ways. Students work on real-world problems and receive mentoring from both faculty and industry experts. Companies get fresh ideas from students who have the time to work on their most pressing problems. It also allows companies to pursue high-risk projects and engage with students—some of whom could be future interns or employees.
“We can also build long-term partnerships with the companies where they can support faculty research projects, in addition to undergraduate senior projects,” O’Hern said. “So it's a win-win for the students, faculty, and companies.”
"It's about having a final product"
One of those companies is Verustruct, a startup founded by Yale alum Nicholas Callegari. The company aims to address the affordable housing crisis with a proprietary 3D-printing technology to construct sustainable houses in less time and cost than conventional construction methods. Devising a completely new way of making houses, of course, comes with its own set of challenges.
The students’ task is to build a device that feeds concrete to a 3D-printing robot in such a way that it’s fluid enough to pass through the hose, but turns sufficiently solid immediately after the robotic device prints it. With the device printing at about eight linear feet per minute, the concrete has to transition from a pumpable slurry into a solid in about 19 seconds.
“So we're kind of working on something that hasn't been done before, which is solidifying the mix and making it pumpable and converting it to something solid,” Stephens-Zumbaum said.
“[The students] tend to do things their own way, which is very often a more creative and more curious way. And they can come up with some really novel concepts that maybe somebody with a different perspective wouldn’t come up with.
Konstantinos Markopoulos
Founding mechanical engineer, Verustruct
It’s hard work, but the students say they’ve enjoyed the experience of collaborating with a company. They meet with Callegari and Konstantinos Markopoulos of Verustruct regularly for updates about their progress. But there is so much work to do that they have to figure many things out on their own.
“It's more about having a final product than how we get there,” added Boctor.
Konstantinos Markopoulos, a founding mechanical engineer with Verustruct, said that working with students gives the company a steady stream of fresh ideas.
“They lack the kind of experience of someone who has been doing things in a very certain way for 20 or 30 years,” said Markopoulos, a recent Yale graduate himself. “They don't have the same framework of thinking—they think very outside the box and challenge a lot of the requirements you give them. They tend to do things their own way, which is very often a more creative and more curious way. And they can come up with some really novel concepts that maybe somebody with a different perspective wouldn’t come up with.”
The best of both worlds
The student team of Kidus Abebe, Matthew Mellas, David Gaetano, and Rayhan Negedu is developing a machine, known as a tribometer, that’s capable of detecting wear on a surface as miniscule as a few nanometers—roughly equal to the dimensions of human DNA. They’re working with ASML, a company that produces equipment for making computer chips.
The crux of the students’ challenge is to make a device that employs a “flat-on-flat” contact—that is, in which two parallel surfaces repeatedly slide against one another, as would occur in ASML's manufacturing environments. This differs from conventional tribometers, which use a “point-on-flat” contact and often have resolutions much greater than what is needed for this group's application.
“At the nanoscale, this is a very significant challenge,” Gaetano said. “It means that we have to think carefully about topics like vibration control and structural stiffness.”
In addition to working on the project, the students have had the opportunity to meet with ASML engineers as well as tour the ASML facility, including its clean room.
Negedu said that the differing goals of academia and industry complement each other well. In academia, he said, much of the research is driving toward contributing to a larger body of fundamental knowledge in a given field. “But in industry, they say, ‘Okay, how are we actually going to solve this practical problem?’” he said. “So it's nice to be exposed to these types of real-world, time-sensitive engineering problems.’”
Nate Miller and Ben Dawson at ASML meet with the students monthly to discuss updates on the project. They agree that they’re getting the best of both worlds from academia and industry.
“The collaboration with the university has been a good thing for ASML,” Miller said. “We've hired a couple of students already from these projects, so having that talent pipeline is good for us.”
Miller and Dawson noted that while their own work leans toward shorter-term goals—things that need fixing immediately, or what market forces dictate—it’s good to have a partner in academia that can focus on longer-term science and engineering problems.
“We're tied to deliverables, so we can't do so much fundamental knowledge-building,” Dawson said. “There are things that just take longer to study and longer to fully understand that, given timelines, we can’t take on.”
"You're using multiple types of information"
Amit Datye, research scientist in mechanical engineering, has been working with several student teams collaborating with industry, including those collaborating with ASML. It’s the fourth year that Yale Engineering has been working with ASML.
“And the company has hired from the senior design groups,” Datye said. “So it's a direct line to the company, because now they know what the student can do over a period of two semesters.”
He’s also mentoring students working with Johnson & Johnson. For one project, Gavin Copper ’26 is developing techniques for analyzing the mechanical properties of the company’s contact lens.
“This would allow them to essentially optimize the material of the contact lens for better clarity, better softness, better abrasion resistance,” Datye said. One of the challenges of doing so is that the lens is curved and floppy, so holding it in such a way to allow for testing is tricky. Figuring that out, Datye said, is the kind of real-world experience that comes out of these collaborations.
“Working with a company, it's fast-paced and you get to solve problems on the fly,” Datye said. “And you get to use all that you’ve learned up to your senior year. You're using multiple types of information from all previous courses. It is a very good learning experience.”
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Published Date
Apr 14, 2026
