Not only was this year’s national conference of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) the largest on record for the organization, it was the most well attended by students from the University of Houston’s chapter.
Forty-one flew to the Washington, D.C. conference, which drew more than 3,700 for workshops, lectures, presentations, academic competitions and award presentations. Once at the five-day event—the largest technical conference for Hispanics—Cullen College of Engineering students represented their school well, placing in three of its competitions.
Extreme Engineering Challenge
Being a little sleep deprived didn’t get in the way of sealing the win for three UH engineering students in the conference’s fourth annual Extreme Engineering Challenge.
A round the clock exercise intended to develop and promote students’ engineering skills by simulating an accelerated scenario with deadlines, presentations, reviews and obstacles, the competition brought electrical junior Danny Rodriguez, mechanical senior Juan Caraveo and electrical power senior Judy Rodriguez together with seven other students from universities across the country.
To earn a place in the competition students had to make an impression on sponsors that included Dow Chemical, Chevron and Schlumberger—tasked with interviewing close to 200 undergraduate and graduate students prior to naming 80 to spots on eight, 10-person teams.
Once selected, the teams were given a made up scenario in which a professor found a new element on Mercury, but was kidnapped by terrorists who demanded that the team build a machine capable of collecting soil samples from the planet. After using their problem solving skills to figure out a series of clues, teams set to work constructing their own unique robots to do so in order to free the scientist.
Partnering with students from schools that included Pennsylvania State, Texas Tech and San Diego State universities, the UH students and these others on the Raytheon team built a robot that set them apart.
“We were the only ones that actually had cupping hands that allowed us to pick just about anything up,” said Danny Rodriguez. “Our all terrain tires also made us stand out. No one else had the treads to handle rough surfaces.”
The win earned each team member $400. Danny Rodriguez earned another $1,000 after being selected as Lead Engineer.
In addition to these students’ win, another three Cullen College undergraduates were on teams that placed in the top three. These included chemical senior Christina Dang, mechanical senior Nester Barroso and mechanical sophomore Kelly Ramirez.
Technical Poster
Senior chemical majors Kevin Rodriguez and Phillip Loya showed off their scientific sides, earning them a spot among just 38 undergraduates selected to present posters detailing summer research projects at the conference.
The poster by Rodriguez, detailing research he did at the University of Iowa, ended up earning him second place. It shared his work over a 10-week summer jaunt where he attempted to create a polymer to implant in the eye.
“The long-term outcome is to implant the polymer in the eye and the polymer would degrade leaving a healthy vein,” said Rodriguez. “This would aid people suffering from central retinal vein occlusion, a disease that causes pressure build up and in the worst cases, the loss of the eye. Our hope is to create a healthy vein and relieve the pressure from the eye.”
Rodriguez’s win carried with it a $750 prize.
Academic Olympiad
An excellent performance on a timed, 50-question test by Kevin Rodriguez, Danny Rodriguez, mechanical senior William Rifenburgh and their alternate, Loya, earned the UH chapter of SHPE a place in the final round of the Academic Olympiad.
Designed to test students’ knowledge of a variety of engineering disciplines as well as on general science, mathematics, physics and statistics, the jeopardy-style second half pitted the team against the likes of six others which included the University of California-Berkley, Brigham Young University, University of Central Florida and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The UH team’s quick, knowledgeable answers earned them second place and each person a $750 prize.