Honda Announces Winners of First iDream Student Challenge

Mechanical engineering student Greg Bader, of Canton, Ohio, demonstrates the assistive kayaking device that he and his team submitted to the iDream contest. The students worked with people with spinal cord injuries to develop the adaptations.

Mechanical engineering students Keira Gaudette (left), who graduated in June, and senior Chantale Levert explain the features of the gait trainer their iDream team developed to help children with cerebral palsy.

Honda today announced the winners of the first iDream Student Challenge at the 2010 Honda Initiation Grant Technical Horizon Symposium in Columbus, Ohio. With a focus on technologies that advance the quality of human life, the iDream Student Challenge is a scholarship program designed to inspire new thinking to everyday challenges and foster a spirit of innovation among the leaders of tomorrow.

This year’s competition included 19 teams of Ohio State science and engineering students whose projects offered creative engineering solutions and innovative technologies in one of three categories: electronics, mobility and materials. A total of $60,000 was awarded to the top three teams in each category as well as to the viewer’s choice winner, a team chosen via online voting.

Honda selected Ohio State to pilot the iDream program this year; next year it will be a national contest.

This year’s first-place winners and their projects are:

• Electronics, First Place: No Abandonment, a Baby Wireless Sensor, An alarm system to help save the lives of children accidentally left in vehicles. Members: electrical and computer engineering students Chuan Lim Kho, Chad Work, Bakhrom Halmatov and Michael Belt. Faculty mentor: Steven Bibyk, electrical and computer engineering


• Mobility, First Place: Solar Solutions, Solar Thermal Electric Car Charging Station, a system that has the ability to use solar thermal energy to charge the batteries on plug-in electric vehicles. The system is proposed to be less expensive than current photovoltaic cell technology with all of the same environmental benefits. Members: mechanical engineering students Brad Engel, Michael Nesteroff and Jake Wither. Faculty mentor: Yann Guezennec, mechanical engineering


• Materials, First Place: Smaller Memories to Remember, Oxide Nanowires for Next Generation Solid State Memory Devices, a plan to engineer nanotechnology for denser media storage using metal-oxide-metal nanowires as transistors. Members: Materials science and engineering students Aakrit Prasad and Kelvin Hux. Faculty Mentor: Nitin Padture, materials science and engineering and physics


• Viewer’s Choice: OSU Gait Trainer Team, a gait trainer for children with cerebral palsy. Members: Mechanical engineering students Keira Gaudette, Ryan Bucio and Chantale Levert, and occupational therapy students Erin Ansley and Brianne Cattran. Faculty mentor: Robert Siston, mechanical engineering


 

The student Gait Trainer team is donating a portion of its winnings to United Cerebral Palsy, a national nonprofit organization that has been committed to change and progress for people with disabilities for more than 50 years.

Honda engineers congratulated the students in each category.

“As a researcher, this is hard work. You’re in uncharted territory,” said Steven Feit, manager of the Infotainment Group of Honda R&D Americas Inc. “To have such enthusiasm shows how much you really care about what you’re working on.”

“As an organization dedicated to being at the forefront of innovation, Honda created the iDream program to inspire new thinking, foster creativity and encourage students to be the leaders of tomorrow,” said Lara Minor, principal engineer at Honda R&D Americas-Ohio and organizer of the HIG and iDream Student Challenge programs. Minor also is director of the Honda Mobility Innovation Exchange, a Honda/Ohio State collaborative program that has sponsored more than $1 million dollars of research activity in 2010 along a broad variety of research topics with professors in electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering.

The awards were presented at the 2010 Honda Initiation Grant Technical Horizon Symposium, held this year at The Ohio State University’s Ohio Union. Speakers at the awards event included Honda R&D Americas President Hiroshi Takemura and Vice President Frank Paluch.

Information about the Honda Initiation Grants and the iDream program is available online.