Two firsts for McMaster at Ontario Engineering Competition

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/ONEngineeringComp09.jpg” caption=”Inventors of the collapsible bike trailer Cory Minkhorst (left) and Lindsey Kettel, both fifth-year mechanical engineering and management students, pose with their prototype which won the Innovative Design category at the 2009 Ontario Engineering Competition.”]

Two teams from McMaster have qualified for the Canadian Engineering Competition after placing first in their categories at the 2009 Ontario Engineering Competition.

Lindsey Kettel and Cory Minkhorst, both fifth-year mechanical engineering and management students, came first in the Innovative Design category, and CJ Smith, a third-year civil engineering and society student, and Justin Sma, a third-year mechatronics student, placed first in Parliamentary Debate.

Kettel and Minkhorst won for their collapsible bicycle trailer that folds up and locks over the rear tire when not in use. They took home the $3,500 cash prize after beating out inventions from the University of Western Ontario, Ryerson University, University of Waterloo and University of Toronto.

Smith and Sma staged a harrowing comeback in a fiercely competitive debate competition. They had to beat the first-seed team from the semi-final round, which they won by a very slim margin. They then went on to defeat the team from the University of Toronto in an extremely close final round, to take home $1,500 and the coveted Silver Tongue Award.

Getting more commuters to cycle to work was the motivation behind the invention of the collapsible trailer. The light-weight trailer collapses to fold upward onto a rear bike rack where it can be securely locked. One study found by the team showed that nine per cent of recreational cyclists in Toronto cited the inability to carry things on a bike as one of the reasons that they do not cycle to work.

This is the second time in three years that engineering students from McMaster have won the Innovative Design category at the Ontario competition. In 2007, Corey Centen and Nilesh Patel won for their CPRGlove, a cardio pulmonary resuscitation assist and training device that went on to win the North American Collegiate Inventors Competition and received top-invention recognition by Time and Popular Science magazines.

The Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) is an annual event that challenges university engineering students from across the province to a series of competitions. More than 200 competitors from 15 universities participated in this year's event. The six competition categories include Senior Team Design, Junior Team Design, Innovative Design, Consulting Engineering, Engineering Communications and Parliamentary Debate.

The top two teams in each category from the provincial level move on to compete against their peers at the national Canadian Engineering Competition, which is being held in Fredericton this year from March 5 to 8.