ME senior design project is still “heating up” nearly a decade later
Every year, hundreds of undergraduate seniors in thePaul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering take their skills beyond the classroom through the department’sSenior Design program, tackling real-world challenges for industry partners and organizations.
For most students, the experience concludes right before graduation with a final presentation atEngineering Expo.
The CU x Bucks senior design team showcasing their adjustable, heated bench system in 2017.
But one team’s project is still making waves nearly a decade later.
This summer, a former team of mechanical engineering alums were nominated for the Sports Business Journal’s 2026 Best Technology Collaboration award. The honor recognizes collaborative projects that showcase excellence, innovation and creativity in sports technology.
Completed in 2017 in partnership with the Milwaukee Bucks, the capstone project developed an adjustable, heated bench system that helps NBA players stay warm and ready for action when their number is called during games.
Today, the product has turned into a commercially-licensed technology that has achieved over $1 million in sales and has been installed by four total teams across the world’s top basketball league.
“It’s amazing to see our senior project making such a strong, lasting impact on the sports industry,” said alum and team member Kylie Copenhagen. “We created this technology when we were just college kids almost 10 years ago. It was a great learning experience back then and it has really solidified why we chose this career path in the first place.”
Where it all began
The project challenged the team to rethink a familiar piece of NBA equipment: the bench chair.
Players coming off the bench during a game need to be able to perform at a moment’s notice, but the traditional folding chairs used by the league for many years offered little support for height, comfort and muscle readiness of professional basketball players.
“Troy Flanagan was the director of performance for the Milwaukee Bucks at the time,” said alum and team member Kailee Hanratty. “He came to us and our senior design program leadership saying that his guys were coming off the bench slow. They were taking too long to warm up and it was really hurting the team’s ability to win games.”
An early prototype of the team's bench chair design.
That’s when the team saw an untapped opportunity.
“Think of a man that’s 7 feet tall sitting in a foldable chair that’s meant for a normal-sized person. That’s like all of us regularly sized people sitting in chairs made for children,” Hanratty said. “This is the standard across the NBA, and we realized right away that there had to be a better solution for the players.”
To tackle the issue, the team started with two design goals. The first was height adjustability.
NBA players could vary in height from around 6 to 7 feet tall, which means a “one size fits all” chair design would be good for some and poor for others. By making the chair adjustable, the team was able to create a more ergonomic solution for a wider range of players that increased blood flow and muscle relaxation.
The team’s second design goal was to incorporate heating into the bench system, helping players maintain muscle temperature while waiting to enter the game.
They said the heating element could also help reduce injury over the course of a long season.
“We tried to see if there was a correlation between skin and muscle temperature and ideal performance and safety,” Hanratty said. “It took a lot of prototyping and testing with both the CU women’s and men’s basketball teams, but in the end the results were great.”
The group says the Milwaukee Bucks were impressed with their technology at the end of their capstone process, using it in their own arena right away. And with the new chairs came instant success.
From the 2017-2018 season to the 2018-2019 season, the Bucks improved to one of the best teams in the league with an incredible home record of 33-8.
The former teammates like to joke that the timing is no coincidence.
“I think we made them win,” said alum and team member Summer Nicks jokingly.
Nearly a decade later, the teammates are well into their own lives and careers. Some work in industry for startups and other companies. Others, like Nicks, are traveling the world in search of what inspires them next.
But with each award that their former capstone project receives, their legacy at Ҵýƽ grows, too.