Top Waterloo teams at this year’s Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) will compete against the best from across Canada on campus later this winter.
Waterloo Engineering students placed first and third in both the Innovative Design and Senior Design categories and second in the Junior Design category at OEC held at McMaster University earlier this month. The first and second place teams will move on to compete in the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC) to be held March 1-3 in Engineering 7.
“Waterloo's teams put up a great showing and represented us extremely well,” says Grant Mitchell, vice-president communications for Waterloo Engineering Society ‘B’. “Two teams in the Innovative Design category used their fourth-year design (Capstone Design) projects, which really says something about the calibre of some projects our students create in fourth year.”
One of those teams, Waterloo A, took first place in the Innovative Design category and also won the OEC’s SFF Social Awareness Award.
Colin Cooke, a fourth-year mechatronics engineering student, says his Waterloo A team, known as Atlas Medical, is developing a variable stiffness mattress to prevent pressure injuries, including bedsores, in bed-ridden hospital patients and others.
Last fall, Atlas Medical received funding and mentorship through both the Baylis Medical Capstone Design Award program and the Quantum Valley Investments Problem Pitch Competition.
As well as competing in CEC, Atlas Medical will showcase its project at the mechatronics engineering Capstone Design symposia on March 15 in Engineering 7.
“We are proud to bring more attention to preventing pressure injuries,” says Cooke.
About 175 students from universities across Canada are expected to participate in CEC, says Mitchell, a third-year geological engineering student.
“It's an awesome opportunity for our students who for the past year have had the opportunity to take part in all of the stages of planning for the competition from designing problems to organizing logistics,” he says.
OEC Waterloo Engineering winning teams
Innovative Design and SFF Social Awareness Award first place winners: Waterloo A team (left to right) Colin Cooke, Michael Jonas, Jackson Fisher, and Daniel Zhou.
Innovation Design third place winners: Waterloo B team members Robert Rowland, Nicolas Benais-Thomson, Keith Teeple and Riley Stone.
Senior Design first place winners: Waterloo A team (left to right) Patrick Groh, Kristopher Griffin, Yuvin Weerasinghe and Maggie Han.
Senior Design third place winners: Waterloo B team (left to right) Xiao Geng Li, Ian Lung, Megan Town and Quinton Millard (not shown).
Junior Design second place winners: Waterloo B team (left to right) Shannon Kremer, Lania Terisno and Kimberly Liu and Xinyi Zou.