Engineering Students to Compete in Nation-Wide Design Contest
July 07, 2009
A team of students from The University of Texas at El Paso will compete in the national Texas Instruments Analog Design Contest after winning the Analog Design Contest at UTEP.
Electrical Engineering students Melissa De Los Santos, Linda Gray, Dan Muse and Erik Torres were the first place winners of the UTEP contest for their project on a machine health monitor.
The machine health monitor uses an accelerometer to monitor the vibrations of mechanical systems (drill, motor, etc.) and uses digital signal processing techniques to identify if a reliability problem exists.
The team will travel to Dallas July 8-10 to attend the TI Engibous Summit and to compete against 1st place winners from other schools. The winning team of the national competition will receive $10,000. For winning the UTEP contest, the team received a $1,500 prize to be split among team members.
“These are junior level students competing against seniors at other top schools,” said Eric MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and team mentor. “They had only one semester to complete their projects, when other teams had a whole year.”
The second place team included Jackie Castro, Ayla Ramos, Leonel Salayandia and Erick Warren. Their project on a high precision laser controlled system, involved a robot that can detect movements or changes over long periods of time.
