First Engineering Discovery Day ignites students’ creativity
(From left) Engineering undergraduates Nick Inscho and Joshua Fraire collaborate with electrical engineering major Henrich Buendia and civil engineering major Baw Reh to design a sensor-equipped garbage can that alerts users when full.
More than 500 first-year engineering students participated in the University of Arizona’s Engineering Discovery Day on Nov. 20. This inaugural event is a showcase for burgeoning engineers who want to put their lessons into practice.
Biomedical engineering major Nour Alsuwaidan participated on a team that developed an ultrasonic sensor mounted on a servo motor that continuously rotated 180 degrees. The sensor spotted objects in its path and displayed them on a computer screen. The team pitched applications from home-security monitoring to vehicle parking assist systems.
The Engineering 102B course included Discovery Day as its second design assignment. The event forms part of the college’s four-year Craig M. Berge Engineering Design Program, which ends with Craig M. Berge Design Day.
W.L. Gore & Associates, a global materials science company, supplied materials and awarded prizes to top teams for categories like best use of prototyping and best overall design.