Engineering students succeed at annual competitions

Engineering students succeed at annual competitions

From bridge-building to computer security, engineering students show their skills at annual competitions.

From Staff Reports | 01/03/2025

2024 was a milestone year for competitions in the Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering.

From canoes made of concrete, to bridges and an ATV, from computer security to robotics, Lipscomb's engineering students made waves in annual contests all over the country.

In the spring, the Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering's concrete canoe not only stayed afloat but also won first place in three races at the Mid-South Student Symposium, beating out universities from Arkansas and Tennessee.

Individually, student Alyssa Hampton's engineering ethics paper won first place in the Mead Ethics Paper Competition, and the steel bridge team completed construction in under 30 minutes, and the bridge withstood a full load test of 2,500 lbs.

The concrete canoe team went on to compete at the American Society of Civil Engineers nationals.

In the School of Computing, two Lipscomb teams competed in the 2024 mid-central regionals of the International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Team Purple solved eight problems and placed 14th overall, Lipscomb's best showing in several years and just shy of advancing to the North American championship. Team Gold solved 5 problems and placed a respectable 28 out of 76 teams.

The Baja SAE team, which builds a working ATV vehicle to race at the Society of Automotive Engineers contest, returned to competition this year for the first time since 2018, racing in Pennsylvania this past summer.

Finally, a team of students earned a prestigious third-place finish at the international 2024 RoboCup Autonomous Robot Manipulation (ARM) Challenge Finals, held this past summer in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

The 2024 RoboCup ARM Challenge, sponsored by Universal Robotics and MathWorks, is a premier international competition focused on advancing autonomous robot manipulation technologies.

The Lipscomb team was composed of electrical and computer engineering students seniors Cleiver Ruiz-Martinez, Gracelyn Grant and Kris Pesnell, sophomore Honors student Gabriel Evertt and May graduates Courtney Stevens and Joseph Laporte.

Read more about the robotics team's success at the RoboCup Challenge here.