D.R.A.D.I.S. wins Engineering Design Showcase

Team D.R.A.D.I.S. was the big winner at Rice's annual Engineering Design Showcase on April 16. The team -- from left, Galen Schmidt, Jeremy Hunt, faculty adviser Gary Woods and Spencer Kent -- won the top prize for Excellence in Engineering and one of two Willy Revolution prizes for its project to develop an advanced driver assistance system to help avoid collisions. Photo by An Le/Luxe Studio Productions

Team D.R.A.D.I.S. was a double winner at the annual George R. Brown School of Engineering Design Showcase at Rice University for its development of a dynamic radar and digital imaging system to help drivers avoid accidents.

The competition held at Rice’s Tudor Fieldhouse April 16 featured the designs of 88 teams of engineering students who competed for nearly $20,000 in prizes.

The D.R.A.D.I.S. team of Rice seniors Galen Schmidt, Spencer Kent and Jeremy Hunt, all electrical engineering majors (though Schmidt has a second major in computer science), took the top prize of $5,000 for Excellence in Engineering as well as one of two Willy Revolution Awards for Innovation in Engineering Design. The second prize brought them an additional $3,000.

“It’s unreal! Really cool,” Hunt said. “I’m glad we put all the work in that we did.”

“Galen said when we won the first award (the Willy Revolution), ‘OK, that’s it! That’s great! We won a major award,'” Kent added. “We did everything we hoped to achieve.” The project was sponsored by the Rice Integrated Systems and Circuits Laboratory directed by Aydin Babakhani, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

A second Willy Revolution Award for $5,000 went to Team DermaShift.

Prizes of $1,000 went to teams for:

Excellence in Freshman Engineering Design: Comfortably Numb.

Excellence in Underclassman, Multi-Year or Club Engineering Design: RiceX.

Excellence in Capstone Engineering Design (2): Sith Putter; ESP.

A prize of $750 was awarded for:

Best Interdisciplinary Engineering Design: IncuBaby.

Prizes of $500 went to teams in the following categories:

Best Conceptual or Computational Modeling Engineering Design: Charles Ho.

Best Technology for Low-Resource Settings Design: Club EWB Nicaragua No. II.

Best Energy-Related Engineering Design: Team BubbleGHUM.

Best Medical Device Technology: r.ARM.

Best Environment and Sustainability Engineering Design: Electric Avenue.

Best Computational Technologies for Health and Wellness Design: Team Aura.

Best Gaming, Creative or Innovative Technology: Holster Hotshots.

Best Aerospace or Transportation Technology: Runway Boys.

People’s Choice: Hands Omni.

The annual public event put on by the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen features senior capstone design and other projects by Rice undergraduates. Read about all the participating teams at http://oedk.rice.edu/showcase.