The ASME E-Fest East 2018 conference has it all, including many student presentations. This year, the ASME UD delegation made a strong showing in both the Old Guard Technical Poster and the Old Guard Oral Presentation Competitions.
To, start the Old Guard Technical Poster Competition began with arriving to set up the posters. This proved to be problematic, as not all of us were able to print out and pick up our posters before we left Delaware. Two of us ended up sending the files ahead and getting a rush print job done at the local Staples in State College, PA. In addition, another member of our delegation slept in, which caused us to be running a bit late. After arriving in the nick of time with our second van, we located the poster competition boards and to finished setting up our posters. Luckily, everything worked itself out an all six ASME UD members who brought posters were able to present them.
We then went elsewhere as the judges critiqued our posters in silence. When we returned latter, we found sticky notes denoting minor rule violations placed on our posters, like being 1/4” too tall. Much latter Saturday evening, the Old Guard Poster Competition results were announced to much fanfare. We were all happily surprised when Tiange Zhang was called up to the awards stage. Her poster titled “Short and Long-term Effects of Antioxidants on Mechanotransduction of Chondrocytes” won second place overall, with a giant $200 check awarded on site.
The following afternoon, the results of the Old Guard Oral Presentation were also announced. Much to his surprise, Joe Koch was called up on stage to accept the first place prize for high presentation on his senior design project with ILC Dover. He also got a jumbo sized check of $750 to boot as a reward for his excellent presentation skills.
Joe Koch’s award winning presentation was entitled “ILC Dover Flex-Wall® Trolley” and detailed his senior design team’s project to build a rapid deployment system for the next generation Flex-Wall®. Joe detailed his team’s approach to designing the cart and methodology, and how they tested the prototype to live up to their high expectations. He also handled answering difficult questions with excellent succinct answers, thus securing the best oral presentation of the day. Unfortunately, our other Old Guard Oral Competition presenter misread the schedule and we arrived too late at the conference for him to present. Though many mishaps and troubles befell us, ASME UD ultimately came out triumphant with a first place oral and second place poster finish respectively. Thank you to all the ASME UD members who came out to this conference to participate. Also, thank you for all of your hard work to represent he University of Delaware well!
With writing by Christopher Kitson