While some students may consider winter session a time to relax and watch endless amount of TV, the MESS team members were studying or volunteering throughout the world or spent their time creating cutting-edge hands-on demonstrations.
Dhara Amin traveled to Guatemala to monitor the bridge that UD’s Engineers without Borders had built a few years previously. Dhara and her team were very excited to learn that this past year the bridge had survived a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. 
Devin Appel, Ben Henry, Mike Pfeiffer, Doug Stewart, and Laura van der Post had the unique opportunity to travel to New Zealand on an engineering study abroad trip. While there, Devin, Ben, and Mike had the opportunity to go bungee jumping. They were able to apply what they have learned in classes to what happens in the bungee cord when someone jumps. Here’s a picture of Devin in action!
Anna D’Alessio traveled to Israel on an alternative break trip and did community service projects in community in the desert. Anna is pictured below picking oranges for a food shelter. 
Eli Gorman and Jess Penman spent their winter session taking classes. For Jess’ photography class, they worked together with a few friends to create a really cool Rube Goldberg machine. Check it out here: http://vimeo.com/58620741
Joel Monza designed, wrote, and built a laboratory experiment involving demonstration of electric muscle stimulation for an upper level biomedical engineering class taught by one of the MESS mentors, Dr. Buckley. Joel had a great time practicing the electric muscle stimulation on volunteers!
Anthony Rossi worked for Dr. Buckley creating a replica of a 4-person, sweep-style crew boat (similar to the ones used by UD’s rowing team). The Mechanical Engineering juniors will be using this “land-boat” in Machine Design II to test prototypes before fitting them on an actual boat. (The juniors are currently working on a project to make crew boats adaptable for those with disabilities.) Here’s a picture of the land-boat:
Vincent Stuhltrager spent his winter session creating a module for The Perry Initiative, a nonprofit that works to get girls interested in orthopaedic surgery and engineering. He came up with an “arthroscopic surgery simulator”, a silicone dome that has a “skin feel” to it and acts as a barrier between a surgeon and the body part that is being operated on. Snake cameras, as well as tools, can be inserted through holes molded into this dome, allowing one to do a mock arthroscopic surgery.