Oregon Tech Students Share New Ideas at Portland-Metro IDEAfest Symposium; Engineering Teams Earn Top Awards

Students from Oregon Tech showed their work at the Portland-Metro IDEAfest Project Symposium June 2. The event gave students a chance to present projects that solve real-world problems and show what they have learned in their programs.

The top award for Best Overall Presentation and Poster went to CryoFlux: Remote-Controlled Dual-Loop Liquid Cooling System for Environmental Chamber Testing, a project by Electrical Engineering students Chris Hardwick, Garth Crawford, and Youstina Reyad. Industrial computing systems generate significant heat under high workloads, and CryoFlux uses a liquid-cooling system to cool the computers under test.

Judges also selected runner-up winners for top poster and top presentation.

The award for Best Poster went to EV Bike Pub Restoration and Repair, created by Renewable Energy Engineering students Andre Fraslin and Adam Briggs. Their project redesigned an electric pub bike, using a hybrid electric drivetrain with solar charging capability. The upgrades improve reliability and allow the bike to run longer while using both human and electric power.

The award for Best Presentation went to Mid-Drive E-Bike Conversion Kit Pedal Assist Control System, developed by Mechanical Engineering students Kyle Isom, Patrick Francisco, and Nicholas Aleshire. Their project turns a standard mountain bike into a pedal-assist, motor-powered bike using a low-cost kit that is easy to install and remove.

The IDEAfest symposium highlights the strong technical skills of Oregon Tech students. It also helps students build experience in presenting their work and explaining how their ideas can be used in the real world.

For a full list of projects presented at IDEAfest, visit https://www.oit.edu/ideafest. Sponsors for the event include Darrel and Diana Samuels and Cypress Creek Renewables.

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