IEEE Competition Awards Ceremony 2012

The 2012 IEEE Conference concluded with a grand banquet, a networking session where students were given the opportunity to meet potential employers or grad-school professors and an award ceremony highlighting the top 3 universities for the different competitions. The University of Technology, Jamaica had frequent visits to the podium with four different awards for the night. Of the 52 universities in attendance UTech was the 2nd most awarded institution. The University of Florida was the only institution to top our tally with six awards (Congrats UF).

Minutes into the night and the University was invited for their first award of the night. The Exemplary student Branch Award is used to acknowledge student branches for their outstanding branch operations. Presented to Branch Chair Kimroy Bailey. Over the year our student branch has found some intreguing ways of inviting new student members to join the group and alluring ways of not only capturing but maintaining their interest in the group. Some of which includes our monthly field trips and tours. These tours opens a window of opportunity of our student members and allow them to see the daily application of engineering as is taught in the classes. Our bi-weekly magazine competition where students will chose an arbitrary article from the IEEE Potentials Magazine, read for a maximum of10 minutes then present on what they have read. Students are allow to present in groups of 2 to build rapport and public speaking skills and the winner would get small prizes and bragging rights 🙂

Brent Richardson was the second recipient from the University when he shared the third place award with his paper entitled: Automation of the Mud Filtration Process at a Sugar Factory. Brent shared the award with Caristy Polischeck from The Christian Brothers University with her research entitled: Power and Temperature Monitoring.

 The third award received by the university was for the T-Shirt Design competition. The 2012 T-Shirt design was done by Mark Newman depicted a totally renewable Jamaica highlighting energy from: hydro, solar, geothermal, and wind energy sources. Mr. Newman’s design was very unique in a number of ways; besides the energy sources the shirt was made from various materials, colors and textures to portray the nature of these renewable sources. To top it off Mark included a circuit of L.E.D.s modeling streetlights that seemed to be powered by the renewable sources. At the back of the shirt was a switch installed by Shayne Addison, Radchiv Guy and Tarick Edwards which controlled the modeled ‘street lights’.

I would like to conclude by expressing my appreciation to everyone who made this possible. Its hard to start listing institutions and individuals without inadvertently exempting persons but I will try and keep updating this section of my post. Thanks to corporate sponsors Wigton Wind Farm Ltd and PetroJam, Siemens CAD for their financial contributions to our teams. Thanks to the University of Technology, specifically the office of the Dean our Dean Mrs. DeLisser and head of School of Engineering Dr. Smith, head of school of computing Mr. Arnett Campbell, also Matthew Bryan and the SAPNA team of programmers and supporters. Thanks to the IEEE Jamaica Section  executives for assisting with out airline reservation and supporting our teams.

Thanks to IEEE professionals and conference organizers: Dr. Hannemann, Dr. Wu, Mr. Burce Harvey, Mr. Shadwell, the student organizers from the University of Central Florida and the host of others who supported our team and assisted in conference proceedings. I would also like to thank Mr. Dwight Reid and Dr. Dave Muir for supporting our student engineers and being our guardians on the trip and each of our fourteen student representatives who branded our island and university. Finally our 35 registered student branch members who supported all our IEEE Activities despite not being able to attend the conference.

To the Heavenly Father who oversee all our plans and made them come to fruition and covered us to America and back. To everyone who had us in their prayers and all who believed and supported the cause. Jamaica can, Jamaica will, Jamaica must.