Alumnus' SNOOZ breezes through Kickstarter campaign

 

 

MechSE alumnus Eli Lazar (MSME ’08, PhDME ‘11) has put his mechanical engineering training into action with the launch of his new start-up company, SNOOZ, which develops energy-efficient white noise machines that use a proprietary fan in an acoustically optimized enclosure. Lazar and his team are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to produce the machines, and at press time, have already surpassed their financial goal by nearly $100,000. 

 

While earning his degrees at MechSE, Lazar worked with his advisers, Professor Nick Glumac and Professor Gregory Elliott (Department of Aerospace Engineering). Focusing on scramjet engines during his PhD work, Lazar was able to come up with the design for a small device that would produce the same level of noise as a box fan. 

 

“After playing around with designs for a while, I remembered some principles I learned involving moving air at high speeds over a cavity and how there were different acoustic modes that could be triggered,” Lazar said. “Using concepts from this idea, SNOOZ was created.”

 

Designed with airflow simulations run on supercomputers, SNOOZ generates live, natural white noise—without looping soundtracks or low-quality speakers—that is adjustable and doesn’t disturb the surrounding air.

 

Lazar credits much of his success to the education he received at MechSE and opportunities he was given to study a wide range of topics.

 

“Engineering work is so multi-disciplinary, and the MechSE department really gave me a solid foundation to be able to contribute to improving society, which is really what engineering is all about. The program built up my perseverance in approaching engineering challenges,” Lazar said. “I also had the great opportunity to attend conferences with my advisers, and many of the relationships I formed with professors have lasted to this day. I learned from them that engineering is as much about failing as succeeding. The only difference is that failing requires you to study what is not working.”

 

The Kickstarter campaign for SNOOZ will close on October 21. Although Lazar and his team have been exploring the idea of other sound devices, their primary focus is the SNOOZ.

 

The SNOOZ has gone viral even before reaching consumers, having been featured in online publications including Crain's, Chicago Inno, Gizmag, Cult of Mac, Digital Trends, and others. The company anticipates shipping the devices to their nearly 4,000 backers in March 2016.