Students Shine at the Annual First-Year Engineering Conference
First-year students presented their projects and papers rooted in sustainability to their families, peers, and faculty at the Annual First-Year Engineering Conference
The Annual First-Year Engineering Conference returned to the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering for its 23rd year and showcased the exceptional work of the entire first-year class.
With a theme centered on sustainability, the event – which is equivalent to a professional conference – hosted parents, peers, and alumni as teams of students in classes ENGR0012 and ENGR0715 presented design prototypes or research papers to determine novel solutions to real-world problems.
Kate Gundlach, a Pitt Engineering alumna and performance engineer at Arrow McLaren, spoke to students about her experiences as a young engineer and how it led to her racing career in her keynote speech at the event.
“Learning doesn’t stop here,” Gundlach said to the room of students. “There’s going to be thousands of opportunities to learn things, so if you have that fear of missing out now, try to put a little less stress on yourself. There’s a lot of cool stuff out there.”
This year’s top papers in each department were:
Department of Bioengineering
“Revolution of Rehabilitation: 3D Printed Prosthetics” by Alec Barlow, Karleigh Bubeck and Sanjana Gupta
Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
“Xanthan Gum: Evaluating Its Ability to Improve Energy Storage Capabilities” by Henry Lombardi, Benjamin Stolarz, and Ben Trudgen
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
“Vertical Farming Using Water Recapturing: A Sustainable Solution to Combating Global Food Insecurity” by Bridget Howe, Nathan Barr, and Clare Duffy
Department of Industrial Engineering
“The Emergence of 3D-Printed Housing to Create More Sustainable and Efficient Homes for the Future” by Alexandra Afanasenko, George Neatherly, and Natalie Wamaitha
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
“Investigating Natural Language Generation Models in Mental Healthcare” by Grace Krakauskas, Claire Shelley, and Jacob Sullivan
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
“An In-Depth Analysis of Self-Healing Concrete as a Sustainable Building Material” by Mae Cook, Kiersten Williams, and Liam Keenan
The Annual First-Year Engineering Conference is a partnership between the Swanson School and Pitt’s Writing Center and teaches students the communications and presentation skills required in the engineering field.
