Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

Invention Designed by SU Engineering Students Selected as a Finalist for the James Dyson Award

Monday, October 2, 2017, By Alex Dunbar
Share
College of Engineering and Computer ScienceentrepreneurshipStudents
two students

Serena Omo-Lamai ’20 and Charles Keppler ’18

Your favorite clothes may be polluting the world’s water supply. Synthetic clothing including polyester, acrylic and nylon fabrics release millions of microfibers every time they are washed. Even though they are too small to be seen by the naked eye, microfibers have become a massive problem and two undergraduates from the College of Engineering and Computer Science have designed an easy to use product to help catch them.

“They can easily wash down drains, go into the ocean and these tiny pieces of plastic eventually cause a lot of chaos for marine life and aquatic life too,” says Serena Omo-Lamai ’20.

“The shedding of microfibers in washing machines for a city of around 100,000 could be the equivalent of 15,000 plastic bags worth of microfibers every day,” says Charles Keppler ’18.

Keppler and Omo-Lamai designed a microfiber trapping system called “FibreFree” during the six week Invent@SU program over the summer of 2017. After prototyping several designs, Keppler and Omo-Lamai came up with a small plastic ball that holds a replaceable, recyclable filter.

FibreFree is now a finalist for the international James Dyson Award. The award recognizes projects developed by young engineers around the world and encourages iterative design. FibreFree was one of hundreds of products to be submitted to the competition from the U.S., the U.K. China and twenty other countries. Only 115 products moved on to the international competition and now the final twenty products will be personally judged by renowned designer James Dyson.

“We are honored that the Dyson foundation has recognized FibreFree as one of the top 20 entries in a competition filled with amazing designs from around the world,” says Keppler.

“It is overwhelming to know that the Dyson Foundation sees potential for FibreFree to help combat the very real threat of microfiber pollution,” says Omo-Lamai.

The Blackstone LaunchPad entrepreneurship program on the SU campus helped Keppler and Omo-Lamai prepare their Invent@SU project for the award competition.

“We are very proud of Charles and Serena. To be a finalist for James Dyson Award is an incredible achievement and it shows the commitment, creativity and hard work they brought to this project,” says College of Engineering & Computer Science Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg. “This is also a great example of what the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Syracuse University can accomplish.”

The international James Dyson Award winner will receive $40,000 and their university will receive $6,000. The two international runners up will each receive $6,000. The winners will be announced on Oct. 26.

Students in the Invent@SU programs on the Syracuse campus and in New York City get the opportunity to design, prototype and pitch new products. In the summer of 2017, the program was a collaboration between the College of Engineering and Computer Science and VPA’s School of Design.

  • Author

Alex Dunbar

  • Recent
  • NSF I-Corps Semiconductor and Microelectronics Free Virtual Course Being Offered
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Cristina Hatem
  • Jianshun ‘Jensen’ Zhang Named Interim Department Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Emma Ertinger
  • Traugott Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Bing Dong to Present at Prestigious AI Conference
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Emma Ertinger
  • Lender Center Researcher Studies Veterans’ Post-Service Lives, Global Conflict Dynamics
    Tuesday, July 15, 2025, By Diane Stirling
  • Maxwell’s Robert Rubinstein Honored With 2025 Wasserstrom Prize for Graduate Teaching
    Tuesday, July 15, 2025, By News Staff

More In STEM

NSF I-Corps Semiconductor and Microelectronics Free Virtual Course Being Offered

University researchers with groundbreaking ideas in semiconductors, microelectronics or advanced materials are invited to apply for an entrepreneurship-focused hybrid course offered through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program. The free virtual course runs from Sept. 15 through…

Jianshun ‘Jensen’ Zhang Named Interim Department Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) is excited to announce that Professor Jianshun “Jensen” Zhang has been appointed interim department chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE), as of July 1, 2025. Zhang serves as executive director of…

Star Scholar: Julia Fancher Earns Second Astronaut Scholarship for Stellar Research

Julia Fancher, a rising senior majoring in physics and mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), a logic minor in A&S and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, has been renewed as an Astronaut Scholar for…

Traugott Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Bing Dong to Present at Prestigious AI Conference

Professor Bing Dong was recently selected to lead a workshop on artificial intelligence (AI) at NeurIPS, the Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems. Founded in 1987, NeurIPS is one of the most prestigious annual conferences dedicated to machine learning and AI research. Dong’s workshop…

6 A&S Physicists Awarded Breakthrough Prize

Our universe is dominated by matter and contains hardly any antimatter, a notion which still perplexes top scientists researching at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but now nearly everything—solid, liquid, gas or plasma—is…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.