Project Day 2010
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Every year in April, nervous 4th-year engineering students spend a day presenting and demonstrating they're final projects to their professors, representatives from industry, the public, and their peers. It's a day of dressing up, looking their best, an marshalling their communication skills to show not just their innovative products and designs, but also what they've learned over nine grueling semesters of classes, labs, projects, volunteering, co-op work terms (for those who take co-op), and, occasionally, even a bit of recreation.
These projects are major design endeavours, developed over months of hard work during the students' final year. This year, over 40 exhibits were diplayed and presentations given at the annual trade show event. The presentations are adjudicated for grades by professors and qualified members from local industries.
This year, the students had the opportunity to take advantage of some extra help during their project development. Springboard West Innovations Inc., along with the University-Industry Liaison Office (UILO), Communities of Tomorrow, the City of Regina, and NSERC, partnered with the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science to support the projects. This partnership takes the form of three exciting initiatives for the undergraduate design program:
- Springboard West Innovations (SBWI) held a one-day “Boot Camp” for students enrolled in their 4th year design classes on Saturday November 7th 2009. This one day information session exposed interested students to many facets of the commercialization process for engineering concepts, leading to future commercial product opportunities.
- SBWI and its partners provided the opportunity for student groups to receive a “Materials Grant” to be used as the groups see fit to develop and prepare presentation materials for their 2010 projects, leading to the April 10th 2010 Engineering Project Day being held on the university campus.
- The final phase of support included a number of “Ingenuity Awards” judged and awarded by SBWI on project day to qualifying student projects based on their project and trade show presentations.
The Ingenuity Awards were presented to the following students:
First place: Warren Ryberg and David Shymko for their Space Heater with Remote Operation via Text Message.
Second place: Christine Enmark and Jamie Kilkenny for their Lower Limb Stretching Assistant
Third place: Kyle Morrow and John Grandy for Downhole Fluid Separation in Southeastern Saskatchewan
Fourth place: Derek Mucha and Jerry (Yan) Wang for their sensor device which calculates the amount of grain in a bin
The prize amounts totaled $1,750.
For more information on the Project Day and on the Ingenuity Awards, see U of R engineering students collect inaugural Ingenuity Awards.