Honda Honors Student Projects that Advance Quality of Human Life

Senior mechanical engineering students (from left) Jake Wither and Mike Nesteroff and (far right) Brad Engel work with Professor Yann Guezennec to install solar heat collecting glass evacuator tubes to create a miniature power plant for electricity generation in their iDream project submission. The students expect the system could provide electricity for residential households or charging stations for vehicles. Nesteroff is working on the collection and storage of the heat energy from solar radiation, Wither is looking at overall system efficiencies and working conditions, and Engel is developing an innovative expansion device that would act like a turbine for the power plant. (Photo by Kevin Fitzsimons)Honda will announce the winners of the first annual iDream Student Challenge on Thursday, July 8, at the Ohio Union.

With a focus on technologies that advance the quality of human life, the Honda 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. Honda selected Ohio State as the pilot for iDream, which will expand nationally next year.

This year’s competition includes 19 teams of Ohio State University science and engineering students whose projects offer creative engineering solutions and innovative technologies in one of three categories: electronics, mobility and materials. First, second and third place teams in each of the three categories will be awarded a total of $60,000; a Viewer’s Choice award will be presented to the team that received the most online votes.

The top teams will display their projects at 12:15 p.m. at the Ohio Union. Winners will be announced at 1 p.m. in a ceremony in the Ohio Union’s Grand Ballroom that will include a welcome by Honda R&D Americas President Hiroshi Takemura and a keynote presentation by Honda R&D Vice President Frank Paluch.

The ceremony is part of the 2010 Honda Initiation Grant Technical Horizon Symposium. Each year, the Honda Initiation Grant program awards grants of $50,000 to professors from the across the country for outstanding proposals on a variety of research topics. Special areas of interest for this year’s topics include automotive, motorcycle and power-sport related, green technology/advanced materials, and computer science/humanoid robotics.

Three Ohio State professors have received Honda Initiation Grants in the past:

• Marcelo Dapino, professor, mechanical engineering, for a project called “Adaptive Seat Belt System Using Smart Material Technologies.” Dapino has since gone on to become the Ohio State Coordinator of the Honda/OSU Mobility Innovation Exchange (MIX) - a Honda/OSU 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.


• Professors Jose M. Castro, integrated systems engineering, and L. James Lee, chemical and biomolecular engineering, for “Effect of carbon fibers and nano-particles on fiber reinforced composite materials”


• Kathy Flores, assistant professor, materials science and engineering, for “Optimization of bulk metallic glass composites for structural applications”

Read more about the Honda Initiation Grants and the iDream program online.

About Honda
Honda began operations in the U.S. in 1959 with the establishment of American Honda Motor Co. Inc., Honda's first overseas subsidiary. Honda began U.S. production of motorcycles in 1979 and automobiles in 1982. The company has invested more than $12.1 billion in its North American operations with employment of nearly 28,000 associates, and annual purchases of more than $17.5 billion in parts and materials from suppliers in North America. Honda vehicles are manufactured using domestic and globally-sourced parts.

Media Contact: Joan Slattery Wall, Ohio State College of Engineering, 614-292-4064 or wall.107@osu.edu.