Fourth-year University of Waterloo Nanotechnology Engineering students Laura Bahlmann, Eric Beauregard, Wenbo Cui and Stuart Murray won second place in the Innovative Design category of the Canadian Engineering Competition, which was held at McGill University March 3-6, 2016.
Competitors at this invite-only event must first beat their peers at their own university and then at a regional competition. The GraFET team did this on their home turf, at the Ontario Engineering Competition held at Waterloo in January.
For consideration in the Canadian Engineering Competition’s Innovative Design category, teams presented their design concept to a panel of judges who evaluated them on technical value, functionality and marketability. The judges, who come from related industry fields and academia, provided real-world scrutiny and valuable feedback.
GraFET’s entry was for a graphene based nano-electronic harmful gas sensor. It quickly detects toxic gases through the use of a graphene based transistor. These individual sensors are so small – about the size of an HDTV pixel – that they could be incorporated into smartphones or wearable electronics. Multiple sensors could then communicate with each other in real time, creating a dynamic air quality map.
Congratulations to the GraFET team for their success at this prestigious competition.
To learn more about GraFET, come a see the team present at the Esch Pitch Competition on Wednesday, March 30, 2016, at the Sedra Student Design Centre in Engineering 5 on the main Waterloo campus. The event begins at 2 pm.