Undergraduate students to compete in International Future Energy Challenge

Fort Worth, TX

5/17/2011

A consortium of undergraduate students from Texas Christian University and the University of Texas at Dallas was notified recently that they have qualified for final competition in the 2011 International Future Energy Challenge sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The international competition will be held July 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro.

 

Established in 2001, IEEE’s International Future Energy Challenge has aimed to address undergraduate research in the context of engineering design for problems related to energy and sustainability. IEEE Power Electronics Society, Power and Energy Society, Industrial Electronics Society and Industry Application Society are among the sponsors of this biennial research tournament.

 

This year, the competition topic was a stand-alone solar powered water purification system. Teams from 29 countries on five continents responded to this challenge, including a consortium of TCU and UTD. Dr. Morgan Kiani, assistant professor, is the TCU faculty adviser at IFEC 2011. TCU undergraduate students included Monica Hennen, Brian Preskitt, Melissa Reinsche and Bor Shkurti.

 

The first screening of technical proposals was completed in December 2010, resulting in the selection of 11 teams, which presented their technologies during a workshop at the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exhibition held March 2011 in Fort Worth. Last week the organizing committee of the IEEE-IFEC selected the finalists, which included the TCU/UTD team.

 

The team will now put the final touches on the engineering prototype and prepare to make a strong presence at the competition. The team will compete with the following schools from China, Germany and India, among others:

 

Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Bangladesh)

Cologne University of Applied Sciences (Germany)

Delhi Technological University (India)

Federal University of Ceará (Brazil)

Federal University of Maranhäo (Brazil)

Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil)

Los Andes University (Colombia)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)

University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez (Puerto Rico)

Yangzhou University (China)

The product-oriented research in this competition prepares undergraduate students for real world design and development while giving them a unique opportunity to flex their intellectual capacity to future employers. For more information about the International Future Energy Challenge, visit http://www.energychallenge.org.

 

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