By Mariam Mesbah
Ryerson engineers placed an impressive third behind the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University at a National Engineering competition held in Edmonton last week.
Teammates Tom Porter, Bobby Ljubic, and Dillon Sutander, all fourth-year industrial engineering students, beat out opponents from the Quebec, Ontario, Atlantic and Western regions.
“We’re very pleased,” Potter said. “Some schools were preparing for a year, but we only entered the competition two weeks before the provincials. We had much less time to prepare.”
The competition required each team to solve actual problems that plague Canadian companies.
“In the (national) category, companies give teams real-life problems that they have not solved,” Porter said. “We have to come up with a solution for them.”
Ryerson’s team had to investigate ways to refurbish the underside of large heat exchanger caps for Ontario Hydro’s heavy water plant. By developing a computer program that would control the equipment that recoats the caps, the students successfully solved the problem.
“We then had to come up with the necessary equations that would give an even recoating of metal to those caps,” Porter said.
The three students presented the research to the national panel of judges and received a $750 prize. “Ontario Hydro seemed pleased with our idea,” Porter said. “It looks like it could work for them.”
The team also finished second to the University of Waterloo at the Ontario Engineering Competition held at Ryerson last month.
Industrial Engineering Professor Ian McDonald says ranking in the top three on a national level in this kind of competition will make a lot of people take notice of Ryerson’s engineering program.
“The competition is sponsored by many corporations like Bell Canada and Ontario Hydro,” says McDonald. “It lends credibility to the school to do so well.”
At a time when Ryerson’s Engineering Department is feeling the pinch of budget cuts, the second and third place rankings are a positive turn of events for the faculty. With the best showing of any Ontario University, McDonald believes the victory can only benefit the students and faculty.
“We are a newly accredited university competing against some well-established schools,” McDonald said. “It’s an impressive showing since we’re the new kid on the block.”
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