Nanotechnology engineering students claim top award at OEC

Monday, January 27, 2020

A nanotechnology engineering undergraduate team won first place at this year’s Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) in the Innovative Design category.

Hosted by the University of Guelph from January 17 to 19, OEC brought together engineering students from across the province to compete in eight unique challenges designed around the theme of Improve Life.

Fouth-year nanotechnology engineering students Han Liu, Daniel Stranart and Luke Wiersma took top honours for their project, SMRT (an acronym for Simple Method for Recognizing Trauma) Coat, which is also the team’s Capstone Design project.

Han Liu, Daniel Stranart and Luke Wiersma“We are developing an affordable, versatile coating that, upon impact, will visibly change colour,” says  Wiersma. “We are designing this around being a spray-on helmet coating to help detect concussions immediately after impact, as about 50 per cent of all concussions go either undetected or worse, unreported.”

OEC's Innovation Design first-place winners are from left Luke Wiersma, Han Liu and Daniel Stranart.

They move on to this year’s Canadian Engineering Competition hosted by the University of Manitoba from March 6 to 9.