An expert jury will review and evaluate submissions. The winning team will receive a cash prize of $5,000, the first runner-up will receive $3,500 and the second runner-up $2,500.

The designs that result from this process will illustrate ways in which it’s possible to minimize the energy and water use in a typical sports facility, while providing a platform for employees, athletes, and the community to experience how sustainable building practices can enhance everyday life.

Registration opens in September. http://www.evolvecompetition.ca.

• Academic excellence
• Extracurricular activities and demonstrated leadership within the campus community
• Extracurricular activities and demonstrated leadership within the general community
• How the applicant plans to continue contributing to the betterment of the engineering community after graduating

WHO CAN APPLY?

Students entering or in their fourth year of undergraduate study in engineering or pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree in engineering at an Ontario university recognized by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board are eligible to apply for The Personal Scholarship.

Applicants must be members of OSPE in good standing to be considered. 

HOW TO APPLY

Application forms are available online in the fall of 2013. Students are required to complete the application and return it to the dean of their engineering school with a copy of their most recent transcript. Each dean may recommend a maximum of two undergraduate and two graduate students. Visit www.ospe.on.ca/scholarship

Team Ontario has seen the future of housing and believes it includes an ECHO. In fact, the team of students from Carleton University, Algonquin College and Queen’s University is so confident in ECHO — the ultracompact, net-zero, solar-powered home they’ve designed and built over the past 18 months — that they’ll soon be trucking it all the way from an Algonquin parking lot to California for the biennial Solar Decathlon competition.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the competition runs for 10 days in October. For the first time ever, Ontario institutions number among the 20 teams, winnowed down from dozens of applicants worldwide, that are vying for first place. That honour will go to the house that best blends affordability, consumer appeal and design excellence with optimal energy production and efficiency.

The competition is meant to introduce clean-energy products and technology into the mainstream while educating students and the public alike.

At just 940 square feet, the ECHO “was designed for people like us, our generation,” says Chris Baldwin, Carleton’s student project manager and, at 24, a member of the so-called Echo Boomer generation.

By that he means people eager for home ownership but on a far more modest scale than the McMansions that may have addicted their parents.

The name ECHO (it was originally called the Aurora House) also plays on “eco,” reflecting the home’s ecologically conscious design.

The modular structure was built in two parts by students in the advanced housing program at Algonquin’s Perth campus and shipped to the college’s Woodroffe site this spring. There, the two parts were joined by three mammoth, 13-foot bolts. It’s since been outfitted with a deck, painted and furnished.

That whole process will be reversed later this month so it can be loaded aboard a flatbed truck and shipped south, where the team will reassemble it for judging.

“There were a few issues along the way, but we figured them out and now it’s easy to snap together,” says construction manager and Algonquin student Jacob Morgan.

Such bumps along the way are valuable, according to Carleton faculty adviser Cynthia Cruickshank. “They’ve learned that it’s not like in class, they’re not always dealing with ideal conditions so they have to learn to create flexibility in the
design to deal with that.”

As part of the competition, each team (there is another Canadian one, Team Alberta from the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University) also has to host a dinner for eight to prove the house is functional. Says Baldwin, “We’ll do a Canadian menu, maybe Atlantic salmon.”

The small, comfy home in which they’ll do so boasts a devilishly clever design.

Outside, there’s 585 square feet of decking and, in front, a post-and-beam exostructure that serves as an architectural focal point while supporting a large array of solar panels. The solar array in turn provides shade for the interior.

Those panels will generate 7.8 kilowatts of electricity for sale to the grid. That’s as much electricity as the home will use in the course of a year, giving it net-zero status.

A tight building envelope includes insulating foam as well as state-of-the art vacuum insulation panels with 15 times the thermal resistance of conventional fibreglass-batt insulation. In all, ECHO’s building envelope has twice the insulating value of a conventional home.

Photo: Chris Roussakis
ECHO’s open and compact kitchen and dining area.

Inside, there’s an open-concept kitchen/living area with generous, south-facing windows to provide natural daylight and maximize solar gain during the winter.

There’s also a master bedroom with direct access to the deck and a small, second space for an office or child’s bedroom.

“There’s not a lot of storage,” says Morgan, “but our generation has to learn to live with less stuff.”

Multi-use furniture like a desk that becomes a bed in the second bedroom will help maximize space.

ECHO was designed using an in-out approach to architecture. That means that the interior layout, including the separation of living and sleeping areas and the flow inside the home — both especially important factors in a small space — are first established. That layout, along with engineering needs, dictate the floor plan and building shape.

Building materials were either donated or paid for through sponsorship. In selecting materials, the team used a “cradle-to-grave” approach that, for example, accounted for embodied energy and emphasized locally sourced, reused, and other
ecologically friendly components.

ECHO brims with emerging technology, including an advanced solar-assisted heat pump (SAHP) system to meet space heating/cooling and domestic hot water needs. There’s also a predictive shading system. It uses daily weather forecasts to raise and lower south-facing window shades automatically, reducing cooling needs on summer days.

ECHO, which would cost roughly $300,000 to build commercially, has involved more than 100 students from the proposal stage two summers ago to the completed project now. Says Baldwin, “It’s really nice to look out and see all the work we put in come to fruition.”

They are looking for product concepts or ideas that solve a real problem, either designed from a university project of designed in the entrant’s own time. The best entries will demonstrate the iterative design process, and include sketches, images of models, prototypes, and videos.

Key dates

• August 1 – Competition closes
• September 12 – National finalists announced (chosen from a panel of notable designers in each country)
• October 10 – Dyson top 20 shortlist announced (chosen from a panel of 4 Dyson engineers)
• November 7 – Winners announced (selected by James Dyson)

Ben Pascolo-Neveu and Gosego Motukwa presented the winning project “Carling Avenue Light Rail Transit” on behalf of the team comprised of Nyishi Muchima (Project Manager), Naser Snobar, Pubudu Herath, and Saeid Matin. Fourteen Canadian universities entered their best capstone project to be evaluated by three judges on reports, posters, quality/efficiency of oral presentations, and quality of answers to questions from evaluators.

In the product design category, winners are:

1st place: Inclusive Moto, Tiziano Cousineau; Carleton University
3rd place (tie): Skate Soccer; Jeff Burgers, Carleton University
3rd place (tie): Harambee, Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu, Andrew Theobald & Alyssa Wongkee; Carleton University

Fourth-year Carleton student Tiziano Cousineau took first prize in the Product Design category for his Inclusive Moto project. The project aims to make off-road motorcycling accessible for those with lower limb disabilities. Cousineau designed a solution that gives a disabled rider complete control of the motorcycle, as well as the ability to ride independently without an assistant holding the motorcycle upright when starting and stopping.

“I was inspired by people who have been injured and paralyzed riding motorcycles,” says Cousineau, himself a motorcycle enthusiast. “I started to think about how I could give them the opportunity to continue riding. From there, I realized that I could help give this opportunity to those who had never been able to ride a motorcycle because of their disability. So the project evolved toward being universal and inclusive for everyone.”

Cousineau attributes part of the project’s success to the training he received in the Industrial Design program at Carleton.

“Carleton’s Industrial Design program really puts an emphasis on exploring a problem,” says Cousineau. “I was actually able to consult with the disabled community by speaking with adaptive sports participants, so in the end I was able to learn from the people I was designing for.”

Tying for third place was a project by fourth-year students Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu, Alyssa Wongkee and Andrew Theobald. They developed a variety of assistive devices for users in rural Uganda requiring better mobility so that they can participate in small businesses. Also in third place was Jeff Burgers for his project Skate Soccer.

Electronics students Tim Inglis, Alim Baytekin, Natalie Lavasseur and Alborz Erfani took top spot. This is the second consecutive win for Carleton. The first runner up was the industrial design team of Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu and Andrew Theobald that developed a variety of assistive devices for users in rural Uganda requiring better mobility so that they could participate in small business. The second runner up was Neil Voornneveld, whose navigation system alerts users to obstacles in their environment and provides location on command via audio.

“The 3-D prosthetic hand is an extraordinary invention that could make the world far more accessible for anyone missing a limb,” says Alastair Summerlee, Chair of COU and President of the University of Guelph.

The prosthetic hand is more nimble when it comes to opening doors or picking up small items such as eggs, and costs considerably less than the average of $15,000 for prosthetic limbs, its inventors say.

Inglis and Baytekin will continue to work on the prosthetic hand over the summer. They have received support from Tom Skinner, MEng/72, who donated funds to run a two-year pilot project that will help engineering students begin to commercialize a fourth-year group project.

About IDeA

Ontario universities are committed to the provincial goal of creating an accessible environment on campus, and in all walks of life. The IDeA competition asks Ontario undergraduate students to use their creativity to come up with ideas to turn that goal into reality.

This year, 18 of 21 Ontario universities participated in the contest, which is supported through the Ontario government’s EnAbling Change Program and COU’s partners at the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario in the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Employment.

Next year’s competition will focus on parasport and active living in honour of the upcoming Pan American and Para-Pan American games taking place in Ontario.

Left to right: Al Perks, PEng, Judge Convener; Tyler Clancy, student, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Frank Hendriksen, PEng, Student Papers Co-chair; Tim Inglis, student, Department of Electronics; Kim Eaton, PEng, Judge; Cynthia Cruickshank, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, PEO Student Papers Night Organizer

Congratulations to Tim Inglis (biomedical and electrical engineering) and Tyler Clancy (mechanical engineering) on their winning presentations at the PEO Papers Night on April 9. Inglis was awarded the best overall paper prize for the Bionic Hand and Clancy won for the best technical presentation for Flexures for the Formula Hybrid Car. The judges were significantly impressed both with the superb engineering technical aspects of their projects and their ability to present this to an audience in a fashion such that non-experts could understand their work.

Prof Cynthia Cruickshank, the faculty member responsible for the Carleton team, now has two consecutive wins after our team recaptured the Tom Foulkes Trophy, awarded by the Ottawa Chapter of PEO.

The Bionic Hand project, a 3D printed hand with intelligent EMG control, also took first place in the Department of Electronics, and second place in IEEE Ottawa Section – Carleton Branch.

The IDea student competition aims to engage the creative minds of Ontario’s university undergraduate students. The goal is for students to develop innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions to accessibility-related issues in their communities.

IDeA is inspired by the goal of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) to make Ontario accessible to people with disabilities by 2025.

Institutions will select their top two submissions in each of the five categories, which have been chosen based on five barriers to accessibility as identified by the AODA.

• Organizational/Systemic
• Architectural/Physical
• Information and Communications
• Technology
• Attitudinal

All you have to do is come up with an idea!

The competition is hosted by the Council of Ontario Universities (COU).

For more details about how to submit, please go to: http://idea2013.wordpress.com/about/ or email dean_mellway@carleton.ca or mahmadi@mae.carleton.ca.