Mars International is proud to be one of the sponsors of this year’s
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) student design
competition.
In addition to serving as a bronze sponsor, Mars International project
manager Jack Craft will serve as a judge for the competition, scheduled
for April 22 – 24, 2016 at Rutgers University in Piscataway, NJ.
Craft has been with Mars since 2014. He has spent the past eight years
serving as a project manager for R&D and product development projects.
The competition gives student ASME members a platform to present their
solutions to a variety of design problems.
These problems can range from the mundane (everyday household chores) to
the magnificent (traveling through space). Each team must design, build
and operate a prototype that meets the requirements of the competition.
This year’s challenge: Building a compact engineering system that can make
a projectile from a standard sheet of paper and test it by propelling it a
maximum distance. The first place team receives $500, with $300 going to
the second place team, and $150 to the team that finishes third.
The contest is designed to allow students to showcase their talents while
also encouraging them to come up with innovative ways to make life better.
Each year, students compete at regional conferences worldwide, with
winners moving on to the ASME International Mechanical Engineering
Congress and Exposition in Phoenix.
The competition is part of the Student Professional Development
Conference. It will be held at the Busch Student Center on Rutgers’s Busch
Campus. In addition to the design contest, there are competitions gauging
engineers’ ability to give oral presentations, to create posters related
to mechanical engineering, and to conduct a presentation using web page
technology.
Mars has lent its expertise to student competitions in the past. We were
honored to mentor “The Tribe,” the award-winning FIRST Robotics team from
Piscataway High School.
