Nearly 600 K-12 students, faculty members and University of Idaho students filled the Bruce Pitman Center Friday for the 24th Annual Engineering Design EXPO.
Sixty different booths gave an inside look into the College of Engineering, individuals were able to view the senior capstone projects and visit all of the events throughout the day.
From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., engineering seniors presented their final projects, all of which were judged and awarded prizes following the event.
IRIC Building Manager Russel McClanahan gives Kellogg High School students a tour of the new facility spaces during the Engineering Expo Friday morning.
“The theme for today builds on our Grand Challenges Program,” Marketing and Communications Manager Rob Patton said during the EXPO.
Within the Grand Challenges Program, there are four broad themes — sustainability, security, health and joy of living, Patton said.
Events throughout the day were based on some of the themes.
Playing off of the element of cybersecurity, near the end of the day participants had the opportunity to listen to keynote speaker Brent Stacey, strategic adviser of Idaho National Laboratory National and Homeland Security. He discussed the connection between cybersecurity and physical items.
Patton said a lot of the projects at the EXPO also discussed topics regarding sustainability and access to clean water.
One of the biggest components of the event was the finger spinners, which visiting students were provided at the event, Patton said. Throughout the day, participants were encouraged to ask the seniors presenting questions to obtain all of the ball-bearings needed to complete the spinner.
“They went crazy for them, we constructed 600 of them and we had probably 300 requests for additional ones,” Patton said.
In terms of how many individuals attended, the event was an overall success, reaching more than 1,000 people who were involved throughout the entire day, Patton said.
“I think, overall, it went really well,” Patton said.
Senior Brandon Jank, who presented a project with his team at the event, said it was a good learning experience.
His project involved a poinsettia management and covering system, which manages greenhouse processes.
The goal of the project was to create a way for people to control their poinsettias or other greenhouse plants using a mobile device, Jank said.
“The idea is we create a small device, like an IoT device, which stands for internet of things,” Jank said. “So it’s a raspberry pie based on the premises that all sensors connect to a webcam and that information is sent to a centralized server so that people can view and control their devices safely and securely from anywhere in the world.”
Jank said their device is helpful because it mitigates risk for greenhouses given the system will report any issues on a device.
“It was great, because we had everyone from engineers that are in the field and can see what our technology really is all the way down to grade school kids,” Jank said. “That was definitely nice to have that mixed age range.”
Savannah Cardon can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @savannahlcardon