Is Conestoga College ready for applied degree programs?
Apparently so, to judge by a recent local competition sponsored by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), where a team of students from Conestoga won top honours,
besting their counterparts from the University of Waterloo and the University
of Guelph.
The event was the IEEE’s Student Papers Night, intended to showcase
excellence and innovation in electronic design and research at the undergraduate
level. Students were judged on their technical presentations and the complexities
of their projects by a panel of IEEE members. Each student team
went through a 15-minute presentation, followed by a question-and-answer
session with the panel. Emphasis was on technical detail combined with
the effectiveness of the presentation. The entrants represented the IEEE
student chapters at the educational institutions.
In all, three Conestoga teams presented, as did three from each of the
universities. Winning $100 as top Conestoga team, plus another $100 for
best overall paper presented at the event, was the team of Brian Clinch
of Waterloo and Sean Cooper of Kitchener, both third-year students in
the Computer Engineering Technology program at Conestoga. Their presentation
dealt with enhancing laser projection technology
in a Virtek Vision LasertEdge system used in a production setting. By
moving these projectors on a track, controlled through a local-area network
(LAN) computer system, the company using the system can minimize overall
costs by reducing the number of laser projectors needed in a large production
area.
Conestoga’s second-place team consisted of three Electronics Engineering
Technology - Telecommunications Systems students -- Michael Carney and
Michael Kraus of Waterloo, and Chris Buckle of Cambridge. That team presented
on a prototype design of a wireless voice channel based on current
cellphone technology, but spreading the signal over a wider bandwidth.
The third-place Conestoga team -- Mark Peeters of Zurich and Scott Howes
of Paris -- made a presentation dealing with a wireless device permitting
data transmission and storage. In essence, it is a portable, machine-stored
disk drive that allows communication and retrieval of data between a laptop
computer or other portable device and the storage unit by use of infrared
technology, making traditional transmission media (computer floppy disks
and CDs) unnecessary.
The event and prizes were sponsored by the Kitchener- Waterloo section of the IEEE. Section members come from Waterloo Region, and Wellington, Bruce and Grey counties. Internationally, the IEEE is a non-profit professional association of more than 377,000 members in 150 countries. It is active in the fields of computer engineering, biomedical technology, telecommunications, electric power, aerospace and consumer electronics.
All third-year students in the Computer Systems and Telecommunications programs at Conestoga prepare major, final-year technical projects. The Conestoga projects from the IEEE Student Papers Night and all other such projects will be the subject of the annual project day of these programs, scheduled for April 18 at the College’s Doon campus in Kitchener. Engineering professionals and firms interested in more details can contact Rudy Hofer, a professor in Conestoga’s School of Engineering Technology.
CONTACT: Rudy Hofer, 519-748-5220, ext. 3271 (Voice mail 8102) <rhofer@conestogac.on.ca>