ISE News Release

RIT Engineering Students Receive National Recognition!!

The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department is very pleased and proud to announce that a team of engineering students have received an EPA P3 Award (P3 - People, Prosperity, and the Planet) for their Multidisciplinary Design Project:

Design and Development of a Low Cost, Regionally Appropriate Solar Oven for Developing Countries in Latin America

Seven teams were chosen, from 65 teams composed of more than 400 university students and advisors, for their creativity and utility of sustainable designs.

The team displayed their final design on the National Mall in D.C. this past weekend. The award competition was comprised of a panel convened by the National Academies. The awards dinner was held on May 16th at the National Academies, where E. Timothy Oppelt (Acting Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development) and William Wulf (President of the National Academy of Engineering), presided over the ceremony and presented the RIT team with their award.

The winning teams included: RIT, MIT, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Oberlin College, University of Colorado at Denver, University of California at Berkeley, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The winning RIT team included students from Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) and Mechanical Engineering (ME). The project was completed in fulfillment of their Multidisciplinary Senior Capstone Design Requirements. Team members included: Emma Fulton (team leader-ISE), Otman El Allam (ISE), Natasha Privorotskaya (ME), Joshua Bates (ME), and Jon Steiner (ME). Team members Chris Wood and Carlos Plaz, ISE graduate students, focused on project requirements outside the scope of the multidisciplinary senior design project.

Faculty advisors included: Dr. Andres Carrano (ISE), Dr. Brian Thorn (ISE), and Dr. Jacqueline Mozrall (ISE). Additional assistance was provided by Dr. Ryne Raffaelle (RIT Physics Department), Cory Cress (Ph.D. student in Microsystems Engineering), Dr. Nandwani (international expert on solar cooking), Mr. John Wellin (ME), and Marilyn Houck (ISE Sr. Staff Assistant).

This was truly a multidisciplinary effort! The student team worked very well together, applying their complementary engineering knowledge, to design, develop, fabricate, and test several outstanding prototypes in a short period of time. These students are an exceptional group of individuals that represented the Kate Gleason College of Engineering and RIT very well.

Along with the student team, Dr. Andres Carrano deserves significant recognition for initiating this project, securing seed funding through the EPA, and providing continuous motivation, support, and guidance to this team. As principal investigator of this project, Dr. Carrano will receive $75,000 from the EPA to continue this work next year.

Additional information can be found on the links below, including an article on MSNBC.