The team won the road test competition with their Personal Urban Mobility Access (PUMA) project, which took two years to design, manufacture, assemble and test.

PUMA is a portable, self-powered assisted vehicle that can be taken on a train or a bus and can be stowed or carried indoors or made available on demand. The project addresses the first and the last mile situation as it mixes seamlessly with public transportation and personal urban transportation.

Advised by faculty and staff from the School of Engineering Practice and Technology, McMaster, students worked collaboratively with Virginia Tech (USA), Howard University (USA), ITESM Monterrey (Mexico), ITESM Estado de Mexico (Mexico), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), and UOIT (Canada) on the project. Seven teams in total competed at the forum.

“Students were engaged in weekly engineering collaboration activities with other students from two continents in three time zones,” says Dan Centea, Lead Pace Integrator for McMaster and Associate Director, Undergraduate, W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology.

“They learned that hard work and teamwork are important parts of engineering collaboration with international teams.”

PACE links GM, Autodesk, HP, Siemens PLM Software, Oracle, and their global operations, to support strategically selected academic institutions worldwide to develop the automotive product lifecycle management (PLM) team of the future.

McMaster is one of the 65 universities from 12 countries that participates in international engineering design collaboration projects that compete every year during the PACE Annual Global Forum.

Since 2007 McMaster has participated in several PACE projects with different universities.

The award was presented at the annual PACE Global Forum Awards Banquet in July 2018 in Warren, Michigan.