Success at ASEE annual conference

Engineering students
take third at regional contest

Trine University engineering students captured a third-place award at the 2012 American Society for Engineering Education’s Illinois-Indiana Conference March 17 at Valparaiso University.

Junior design engineering technology majors Nick Cocanower and Daniel Grabill were honored for their united electrical engineering and design engineering technology packaging project. Combining two fields – design engineering technology and electrical engineering – they created specific packaging for intricate printed circuit boards that were equipped to sense temperature or force.  

Trine assistant professors Vukica Jovanovic, Ph.D., and Andrea Mitofsky , Ph.D., worked in the fall of 2011 to collaborate their classroom efforts and assigned students interdisciplinary projects to simulate real-world experiences. In this case, aspiring design engineers, such as Cocanower and Grabill, worked with electrical engineering students to complete the project. Jovanovic and Mitofsky required students to communicate and create products within an allotted budget in a given timeframe.

“Engineers often work on teams with people from different disciplines, and the collaboration often occurs throughout the design process,” Jovanovic said. Cocanower and Grabill designed a hand-held packaging prototype to house a sensor system and its printed circuit board using Solidworks software. Then, they used Trine’s new Z Corp 650 Rapid Prototyping Printer. View their plan here.

“This is a multidisciplinary approach which utilizes the ideas of concurrent engineering, where collaboration occurs throughout the design process, increasing the quality and capabilities of a finished product and decreasing the time needed for development,” said Jovanovic, who added that she and Mitofsky were asked to give a presentation during the conference about their endeavors.

Trine design engineering technology chair Tom Trusty is impressed with student progress and looks forward to continuing to partner with area industry to solve real-world issues.

“This was a great opportunity for our students to publicly showcase their engineering skills and projects that they completed in the Allen School of Engineering and Technology,” Trusty said. “This would not have been possible without the support of 2007 alumnus Casey Pierce, who serves as the chair of the Design Engineering Technology Advisory Board. His generous donation to design engineering technology allowed students and faculty to travel to and participate in the conference.”

Their projects, and many others, will be available for public viewing during Trine’s annual, free Engineering Expo, which will be Friday, April 27 from 1-4 p.m.

For more information about Trine’s design engineering technology program, contact Trusty at trusty@trine.edu or (260) 665-4266.

To share your news, contact Trine University communication specialist Lindsay Winslow Brown at winslowbrownl@trine.edu.