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School Wins WASHINGTON (20 February 2003) — Drexel Hill (Pa.) Middle School won the third IEEE-USA Best Communications System Award at the national finals of the National Engineers Week Future City Competition on Wednesday. The honor, one of 19 special awards presented at the Hyatt Regency Hotel-Capitol Hill, was for the most "efficient and accurate communications system." Students Philip Crone, Marina Kec and Rachel McKlindon comprised the team with David Granger, a Drexel Hill technology and engineering teacher, and IEEE member William Waldron, manager, performance engineering for Cingular Wireless in King of Prussia, Pa. The team advanced to Washington by winning the Philadelphia regional competition last month. Drexel Hill's city, Octavia, is set in the year 2100 and located in the Bay of Fundy off the coast of Nova Scotia. Its communications system, Telenium, is made up of a silicon chip inserted into each person's hand at birth. The chip generates electrical impulses to the optic nerve and produces a holographic screen in front of one's eyes for viewing sports and entertainment, news, banking information and the Internet. Voice transmissions go to the user's eardrum, while the skeleton serves as the antenna to cell site receivers. "They had their communications system all worked out. It was pretty impressive," said Jerry Schmitz, a mechanical engineer from Las Vegas, who judged the competition with Tom Easton, a metrologist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "It was very unique in their design and application." IEEE members Jean Eason of Fort Worth, Texas, and Mike Andrews of Scottsdale, Ariz., presented each team member with a plaque and $100 U.S. Savings Bond. Fellow members Ananthram Swami and Lowell Smith were unable to serve as judges again this year because of the crippling snow that struck the Washington area. The Future City Competition, which IEEE-USA introduced to Engineers Week in 1993, is designed to encourage the future generation of engineers. Seventh and eighth grade students create their own vision of a city of tomorrow, working first on computer and then constructing three-dimensional scale models. About 30,000 students competed this past year. Mission Middle School of Bellevue, Neb., won the overall national competition Wednesday. Visit www.futurecity.org. IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers created in 1973 to promote the careers and public-policy interests of the more than 235,000 electrical, electronics, computer and software engineers who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org.
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November 2002 |