Pitt IEEE Students Win Big at Student Activities Conference

GLASSBORO, NJ (May 12, 2017) … Students from the University of Pittsburgh chapter of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) placed in three competitions at the 2017 Region 2 IEEE Student Activities Conference at Rowan University. The Pitt teams won first place in the Pico Conference Paper Competition and the Micromouse Competition and third place in the Brown Bag Circuit Design Competition. 

“We are very proud of how these students represented the ECE department at this conference,” said Samuel Dickerson, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and faculty advisor for Pitt IEEE. “The IEEE is not just the largest association for electrical and computer engineering professions, it is the world's largest association among all technical professions, so all of the major universities in the region participated. We are all delighted to see how our students’ performance reflects the quality of our SSOE ECE students and their ability to apply what they've learned to challenges outside of the classroom.”  

Kendra Farrell, a junior majoring in computer engineering at Pitt, took home first place for writing and presenting her technical paper titled “The James Webb Telescope and Its Search through Time.” For the competition, Farrell explored technical aspects of the James Webb Telescope—NASA’s next generation, infrared telescope scheduled to be launched in October 2018.

A team consisting of Pitt undergraduates Ryan Matthews, Andrew Saba, Alex Glyde, and Michael Hermenault also won first place for their design of an autonomous robot mouse in the Micromouse Competition. The mouse was able to solve an eight-square-meter maze in the shortest amount of time. The four team members belong to the Robotics and Automation Society at Pitt.

In the Brown Bag Circuit Competition, students completed challenges using various electrical components provided in a brown bag. The components included voltage dividers, clock signals, inverters, and XOR gates. Pitt students Brandon Contino, Jenna Delozier, and Demetri Khoury won third place.

The Pitt students competed against 27 other universities in the Atlantic Region of IEEE, which covers parts of Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, and West Virginia. There were a total of 10 activities, and students could also attend leadership workshops and an awards banquet during the conference.

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Author: Matt Cichowicz, Communications Writer