National honours for engineers
Students in national competition earn second place in two categories
Four Ryerson engineering students captured awards in two categories at the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC) in Montreal this past weekend. Ryerson was the only university to win two awards at this year's competition.
Biomedical engineering students Thiago Caires and Michal Prywata won in innovative design for their pneumatic prosthetic arm while Roman Dabrowski, aerospace engineering, and Sasha Harpe, civil engineering, placed in the parliamentary debate category.
Caires and Prywata's prosthetic arm is meant to be an efficient and affordable device for patients. The arm is powered by compressed air, which is triggered by brain inputs fed into a microcontroller to move the artificial muscles. To develop their concept further, the two have linked with Ryerson's Digital Media Zone, the university's unique centre for student innovation and idea development. They have also applied for three patents for the arm and other innovations they are developing.
At the CEC there were six categories and 18 awards were distributed, with prizes going to the top three teams. The success at the nationals comes on the heels of a record-breaking performance for Ryerson at the Ontario competition, where Ryerson students took the top two places in the innovative design category - the first time in the competition's history that one university took the top two positions.
The Canadian Engineering Competition brings together the best and brightest undergraduate engineering students from across the nation. It's an opportunity for students, industry representatives and academics to connect in a professional, competitive and social environment. The various competition categories test communication, technical and design skills as a way to recognize those individuals who have the potential to become future leaders in the profession.