AIChE Western Regional Conference

Friday April 20-Saturday April 21, 2007
Santa Barbara, CA

Chemical engineering students from the UC Davis Student Chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) swept the competition during the AIChE Western Regional Conference held at UC Santa Barbara on April 20-21, 2007. Sean Beecroft won the Regional Student Paper Competition for his talk entitled, “Molecular Modeling of Glycoprotein Systems”. Ted Geissler, Stefanie Boehme, and Patrick Wong led the Chem-E-Car Competition team (other team members not present include Khanh Do, Sean Beecroft, Julien Lecuyer, and Andie Chan), which won for best poster presentation and took first place in the main event of the conference – the Chem-E-Car Race – beating teams from UCLA and UCSB. Chemical engineering experts judging the poster competition called it the “best poster among the lot” and a “novel design.” AIChE Student Chapter President, Alina Av, commented “Three years ago when we first entered the competition, I knew that we could bring our club to a new level. It feels good to hear other schools credit us and say ‘We didn’t even know about this until (UC) Davis!’”

AIChE Student Chapter Advisor, Dr. Tonya Kuhl, also attended the two-day event to lend her support for UC Davis. On the first day, the team and supporting AIChE student chapter officers attended a bowling social with the other UC teams. On the second day, the team answered tough questions about power source, unique features, and environmental/safety factors. The team also did some serious troubleshooting before taking first place in the Chem-E-Car Race. One hour before the competition, the host school announced the distance the car is required to travel and the load it must carry. The competition distance and load were 63 feet and 215 milliliters of water. Not only did the team calculate how much catalyst they needed to add to their reaction to achieve this distance, they also had to troubleshoot what to do since the filter they were using had worn out. “Women’s tampons became our secret weapon,” joked Chem-E-Car Coordinator, Ted Geissler. The AIChE Student Chapter Vice President, Swati Batra, added, “We are very proud of our Chem-E-Car team and we look forward to seeing us glide to the finish line at the National Competition in Utah next year.”