Purdue students to compete
in civil engineering contest
By Genevieve Puppe
Staff
Writer
Purdue civil engineers will travel to New Mexico
this month to compete in the annual International Environmental Design
Contest, a contest they've won the past two years.
Professor Loring Nies led the teams in a trial
run of the presentation section of the competition Thursday.
Nies said, "The students this year have come a
long way."
The contest takes place April 9 to 12 at the New
Mexico State University, Las Cruces campus.
Purdue civil engineering senior design class students
will participate in the competition this year along with more than 40
other teams from across the country to bring solutions to real world
problems.
Each team is given a problem to solve within a
budget requirement, time constraints and other competition guidelines.
The tasks given to Purdue’s senior design
class include developing a method for safe retrieval of waste from underground
tanks and designing a roof system to cover a 1,000 square foot house
using small diameter round timber. Also included are the tasks of developing
a mobile treatment system for hazardous waste materials and developing
a cost-effective method to minimize or eliminate acid mine drainage.
The 23 Purdue students competing this year make
up four teams and will be leaving Sunday for New Mexico.
Each team has 15 minutes to give a power-point
presentation summarizing the solution they came up with, the materials
used and the means with which they reached their conclusion.
The actual competition begins Monday with the presentation
section followed on Tuesday and Wednesday by the physical demonstrations
of the solutions.
The teams will be in New Mexico through Thursday
when the awards ceremony will take place.
Each group, along with developing solutions, must
give a detailed demonstration of their conclusions.
The students began work on their projects at the
end of last semester.
Frank Tokoly, a senior in civil engineering said,
"The real-life problem solving is interesting to do and it has
a residential application."
Tokoly worked on the roof system solution with
several other group members.
Companies who generally remain confidential contribute
money to the competition to help students solve their real-world problems.
Major contributions from Purdue alumni also help
fund the competition.
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