¼ø»Æʦapp Students Awarded Second Place at Inaugural National Solid Waste Design Competition
Thursday, Aug 27, 2015
¼ø»Æʦapp civil engineering ¼ø»Æʦapp won second place in the Solid Waste Association of North America’s (SWANA), inaugural National Solid Waste Design Competition (SWDC), at the WASTECON 2015 conference, held in Orlando, Florida, August 24 - 27.
Student teams were challenged to solve a "real world" problem faced by solid waste professionals – to design a solution for dealing with elevated levels of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in landfill gas (LFG). The competition consisted of a design report, a poster outlining the proposed solution and a presentation by the team to demonstrate their understanding of the material.
"This event allowed our team to highlight skills that we learned in the civil engineering capstone design class, which makes us highly sought after upon graduation," said Joseph Lakner, graduate student and team co-captain. "It also opened our eyes to engineering applications that we never considered. We were blown away by how much the industry is inspiring ¼ø»Æʦapp and young professionals to transform waste into reusable products."
The team included undergraduate ¼ø»Æʦapp Alyssa Dalloo; Justin Dacey and graduate ¼ø»Æʦapp Lakner, Bishow Nath Shaha; and Neil Coffman. The team was guided by Daniel Meeroff, Ph.D., associate chair and professor in the ¼ø»Æʦapp Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering.
"This competition was a great opportunity for our ¼ø»Æʦapp to compete against ¼ø»Æʦapp from the top universities by practicing what they have been learning in the classroom and the research lab," said Meeroff. "We are very proud of their accomplishments and we received so many compliments on the quality of their design. They really did an excellent job."
The goal of the activity is to give ¼ø»Æʦapp an opportunity to gain industry-related design experience and to be introduced to potential careers in solid waste management.
"Our team gained confidence from the event that we hope will inspire the next student team members to believe in themselves and make the ¼ø»Æʦapp community proud," said Nath Shaha. "On behalf of the ¼ø»Æʦapp student team, I am thankful to Dr. Meeroff for his continuous guidance and also Nathan P. Mayer from SWA for his continuous support."
The event was created by SWANA's Young Professionals (YP) group. The ¼ø»Æʦapp received $1000 in prize money and $50 each for participating.
Photo l-r: Neil Coffman, Bishow Nath Shaha, Joseph Lakner, Alyssa Dalloo, Justin Dacey and Dan Meeroff, Ph.D.