Drones to Transmissions: ECE Students Take Home Multiple Awards at Design Day 2022

At Craig M. Berge Design Day 2022, students, faculty and friends of the College of Engineering celebrated coming together in person after two years of virtual events due to the pandemic.

Design Day – named for Craig M. Berge, a College of Engineering alum and longtime supporter of the college who passed in 2017 – is an annual opportunity for engineering seniors to present the results of their yearlong projects to the public and hundreds of judges. This year, 97 teams of students, who completed projects requested by industry and university sponsors, competed for $46,250 in prizes. 

Drones were a popular subject. One team created a low-cost drone tracker that uses visible light to detect drones, which are often too small to show up on radar.

"We learned a lot of stuff that we weren't taught in classes, because they can't teach it in classes, because you have to learn through experience," said ECE team member Brad Zimmermann. "We all, at some point, had to work on something that wasn't our strength."

ECE sponsored Team 22018, which designed an Electronic Continuously Variable Transmission. The team won two awards: the Sharon ONeal Award for Best Integration, Verification and Validation worth $1,000, and the Rincon Research Award for Best Presentation worth $1,500. Team 22018 consists of Lance P Casto, Lucas Cougar Creery, Eric Anthony Duarte, Brian Faires, Andre Schreiber, and Micah Sieglaff.

"There's nothing like getting to drive with a transmission you built," Faires said.