Katherine Stevenson is a senior academic teaching specialist in the College of Engineering and faculty adviser for the MSU Super Spartans team.
It is my pleasure to announce that the MSU Super Spartans won the design hack in Las Vegas at the 2023 Siemens Realize Live conference, June 12-15. There were more than 3,000 corporate attendees at this exciting event.
Our team of Ava Boley, Ari Bozann and Jacob Rubino came out on top in this challenging and inventive design hack. MSU’s other team, Sustainable Spartans with Justin Schmitz, Citizen Kim and Harshil Jain, also did us proud. All are mechanical engineering students.
The design contest consisted of four teams from different universities, two were from MSU, who were given a 48-hour design challenge by Kyburz Switzerland. Kyburz develops and produces high-quality electric vehicles for delivery companies, industrial companies, municipalities and private owners.
The challenge — solve an existing design failure in the current chassis of the Kyburz vehicle.
Kyburz, a customer of Siemens, volunteered to be the sponsor for the design hack and generously supplied the NX data set to launch the 48-hour competition.
The judges were from Kyburz, Siemens vice president of digital software, an executive from Exxon Mobil, a University of Texas professor and a University of Michigan mechanical engineering student.
Teams were required to design a solution, prepare a presentation and present the design fix to the panel of judges in just two days. Key highlights included sustainability, safety, feasibility, business value and innovation.
The Empowers Education and Marketing teams from Siemens hosted the event, providing each winner with a virtual reality headset and a unique opportunity to present in front of the OEM Council to some of the world’s biggest corporations. Students were also mentored and interviewed by international professionals from SpaceX, Boeing, Northrup, Ford, and many more!
I cannot begin to tell you how eye opening and possibly life changing this event was for these dedicated and talented students. Next May, the competition returns to Las Vegas with another design challenge at Realize Live. I am excited to see what future Spartans can do at this amazing event next year!
This story originally appeared on the College of Engineering website.
