There are countless opportunities for Gator Engineering students to get their hands dirty before they get their hands on a diploma. One such opportunity is the College's Integrated Product and Process Design program.

As a senior at the UF College of Engineering, Amir Rubin was hardly prepared to start a company, pitch clients or innovate new products.

But when he joined some friends in launching a start-up in his last semester in spring 2003, he did have some practical experience: He was on a team that had designed a wireless fire hydrant pressure gauge for an Ocala emergency-equipment company. The team did the work as part of the Gator Engineering's Integrated Product and Process Design Program, a program intended to immerse students in real-life engineering while providing low-cost assistance to corporate and government sponsors.

The wireless monitor allowed firefighters to check street hydrants quickly and easily. It had nothing to do with the startup's main product: A tiny military surveillance drone known in the trade as a micro air vehicle, or MAV.

But for Rubin, now vice president for core technologies at the Gainesville-based Prioria, what mattered was that he had gotten his hands dirty.

"Up until the IPPD program, every engineering assignment you do in school, your professor hands you a piece of paper with a great detailed description of the assignment," he says. "But when it comes to actual product development, you don't get a nice piece of paper clearly defining your assignment. You have to work with your client and you have to figure out what your client wants — and what you can do."

From laser-guided mortars to lightning detectors

Launched in 1995, the IPPD program is one of a handful of senior capstone design classes nationwide, says Keith Stanfill, the program's director. LeHigh University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Illinois are among others with similar programs, but UF's IPPD — which welcomes students from all engineering disciplines — is likely the most comprehensive and wide-ranging, Stanfill says.

About 140 undergraduates from all engineering disciplines participate in more than two dozen projects annually sponsored by the military, private companies and government agencies. In 2003, the College added an entrepreneurial option, allowing engineering students to team with law and business students to form virtual companies to design and market products.

Projects are wide-ranging, spanning industrial processes to factory upgrades to commercial and medical products.

Over the years, student teams have designed or assisted in the design of an environmentally friendly bug trap, laser-guided mortar, lightning detection system, blood clot remover and a helicopter simulator. Student teams have helped a sandwich company engineer a better oven for heating sandwiches and an appliance manufacturer build a better coffee maker. They've also assisted Dow Chemical with a batch processing challenge and Medtronic Xomed with packaging for a medical nasal sponge, among numerous other projects related to industrial and manufacturing processes.

Companies and other sponsors pay $20,000 annually to sponsor a team, funds that reimburse departments for faculty time and pay for student travel and supplies.

Mark Burns, a 1997 electrical engineering graduate, worked with his team to redesign two circuit boards for a company he wound up working for after he graduated. Paradyne, which designed hardware for communications applications, was later bought out. Burns is now the principal engineer for St. Petersburg-based GTS.

"What you learn is the entire design flow, from the start in determining what the design requirements are, all the way through pushing it through production," Burns says. "So it's a well-designed starter project for what you will do the rest of your life."

Chris Birdsall, a 1996 graduate in chemical engineering, says that although he didn't recognize it at the time, the problems he encountered in the IPPD program were strikingly similar to those at the workplace.

With regard to bringing the team together, for example, "At the time, it was like, 'we're on the team. Why can't we find ourselves the time to make this a priority and push it through?'," he says. "And then you find out this real life, right?"

The same was true for the more technological aspect of the work, which for Birdsall involved creating a water monitoring system for a drinking water plant.

"You can do all these fancy calculations," he says, "but what looks good on paper isn't always what works in the field."

Birdsall, now a chemical engineering for a major oil company whose duties include recruiting on campus, says students with IPPD on their resumes have an automatic leg up.

"It makes a real difference in their hiring," he says.

From virtual to real startups

That's great for the majority of students seeking to find work at a corporation or government agency after graduating. Some students, however, have a more entrepreneurial bent.

In a partnership with UF's Office of Technology Licensing and the Warrington College of Business' Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, IPPD seeks to provide a home for these students through its entrepreneurial program.

Stanfill says the goal is to bring together engineering, business and law students to nurture a UF-developed technology via a virtual company. Two or three teams each year not only do the engineering work of developing prototypes, but also investigate intellectual property issues and craft marketing plans.

"We look for UF inventions that need some help in commercialization and that can be mass-produced and are easy to make," Stanfill says.

Although only four years old, the program has already spun off one bonafide company: Envirflux, which makes a device that monitors groundwater contamination.

"With a traditional IPPD project, there's a potential for a job with a large company and the end of the process, and certainly that's happened," Stanfill says. "Here there's a possibility of getting involved with a startup, and now we're seeing that too."