BY: SEXTON DELEGATES TO THE CANADIAN ENGINEERING COMPETITION
Last weekend, 3rd year engineering students Annika Benson (Electrical) and Kayleigh Landers (Mechanical) went face to face with Canada’s top engineering students, and brought home a silver medal for their innovative and cost-saving solutions to a given problem. They were amongst the ten Dalhousie delegates who, after placing 1st and 2nd in the regional Atlantic Engineering Competition, were flown to Waterloo to compete against the nation’s best and brightest in the annual Canadian Engineering Competition.
The pair competed in the Re-Engineering category, which challenges students to generate feasible, creative and environmentally-conscious solutions to real-life engineering problems. In the week leading up to the competition, Benson and Landers were asked to design a way to divert fabric waste from Canadian landfills, which they would later present to a panel of judges. The Dalhousie team proposed adding textile waste to current curbside pickup, and using the collected scraps as a strengthening agent for pavement – a solution deemed innovative and economically attractive, as it would essentially be free to implement.
Once in Waterloo, teams were given limited time to solve a second case: re-engineering a Kenyan elementary school to be electrically self-sufficient. In the span of eight hours, the Dalhousie pair designed a cost-efficient solar panel system, which they demonstrated could charge classroom technology and power indoor lighting to improve education and maximize use of the facility. The creativity, feasibility and level of technical detail conveyed in the Dalhousie team’s solutions stood out from the competition, fetching them a 2nd place trophy and a national title.
Benson and Landers were not the only Dalhousie students to earn a place at this year’s national competition. At the Atlantic Engineering Competition held here in Halifax this January, three other Tiger teams distinguished themselves as the top talent in the Maritimes in the areas of innovation, communication and debate.
In the Innovative Design category, Dalhousie’s Laura Brenton (4th Year Industrial), Ingy Elokda (2nd Year Mechanical), Ahmad Kammonah (1st Year Mechanical) and Yogan Parianen (3rd Year Mechanical) presented a novel design concept, which proved that hair might be the best way of solving some of today’s hairier environmental problem. Known as the “Oily Otters,” the team proposed using pantyhose stuffed with waste human hair as a means of absorbing marine oil spills. They implemented this idea with an autonomous cleaning robot known as the “Hairoomba”, which, unlike traditional oil sorbents was entirely reusable.
In addition to celebrating innovation and creativity, the Canadian Engineering Competition also recognizes the importance of being able to articulate engineering concepts to relevant stakeholders. For the Engineering Communications category, 4th year students Faisal Hajibi (Mechanical) and Essa Nimer (Civil) had to do just that. They were asked to present a complex, technical topic in a way that would be comprehensive for the general public and where then judged on the quality of their delivery. They chose to explain the multifaceted issue of mercury contamination, focusing on the use of accessible language, and intuitive explanations to express the importance of problem to a less-informed audience.
In the Extemporaneous Debate division, Cecil Ash (4th year Industrial) and David Cejpa (4th year Industrial) demonstrated their skills pertaining to a different, but equally valuable aspect of engineering communications. They were given a matter of minutes to structure powerful arguments on subjects ranging from evaluating global climate change policies to whether or not Engineering Co-op should be mandatory. For each round, winners were chosen based on which team had the most convincing argument, strongest points, and greatest display of mental prowess.
Though Dalhousie’s representation at this competition is an immense accomplishment, the even greater win is the valuable, hands-on engineering experience gained by the student delegates. Practice with problem solving, innovating, communicating and debating will benefit them academically and serve as distinguishing assets as they transition into industry. As the cases presented throughout this 2019 Canadian Engineering Competition highlight, graduating engineers will be faced with some of the world’s toughest challenges but thankfully, it looks like our Dalhousie students have the brains to solve them.