Mechanical Engineering professor recognized for industry collaboration

UBC Mechanical Engineering’s Brace Team—students Paul Hahto, Angela Melnyk, Liz Arnott, Isaac Herscovitch and instructor Mike Van der Loos—has won the inaugural ALS Society of British Columbia’s Excellence in Engineering Design Competition for Flexi-Brace, a dynamic neck brace.

Flexi-Brace, developed within a fourth-year Mechanical Engineering capstone design course, gives those suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS—aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease) increased mobility and freedom. The team also addressed issues of aesthetic appeal and comfort in its award-winning design.

The ALS Society of BC gave the team first-place and $5,000 for winning its first design competition, which seeks innovations to improve the quality of life of people living with ALS. A neurodegenerative disorder that affects motor neurons that carry messages from the brain to muscles, ALS results in weakness, atrophy and immobilization; upon initial diagnosis, typical life-expectancy is two to five years.

The Flexi-Brace team also placed second in the 2008 Canadian Design Engineering Network student design competition, which endeavors to enhance the capacity for design and innovation in Canada.

The ALS Society of BC was founded by ALS patients, their family members and health care professionals to meet the physical and emotional needs of people with ALS and their caregivers. To learn more about ALS BC, visit: http://www.alsbc.ca/

Vancouver, Canada—August 8, 2008—The UBC Department of Mechanical Engineering has won four awards at the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE) Global Annual Forum held recently in Detroit, Michigan U.S.A.

UBC won the first-annual PACE Laboratory Competition. Entries were evaluated on visual appearance of the outside entrance and interior of the laboratory; laboratory layout for student use; equipment; network and infrastructure; PACE software; and student and faculty usage.

PACE, a corporate alliance between General Motors, Autodesk, HP, Siemens PLM Software, EDS and Sun Microsystems, has worked together since 1999 to support academic institutions worldwide with computer-based engineering tools to prepare industrial/mechanical designers, engineers and analysts with the skills to compete in the future.

In 2003, PACE gave UBC Faculty of Applied Science an in-kind contribution worth approximately $240 million, consisting of computer-aided design, manufacturing, and engineering software, hardware and training, to form the UBC PACE Laboratory.

“I knew our lab would score well and I knew we had a chance of winning, but it was still a bit of a shock when they started to present the details of the wining lab and I realized they were talking about our lab,” said Alan Steeves P.Eng, Manager Computing/Electronics, Department of Mechanical Engineering.

In addition to the PACE Laboratory Competition, Mechanical Engineering also won three other awards at the forum.

Fourth-year student Parisa Bastani and her collaborators at the University of Toronto won the “Best Engineering Track Paper,” selected from a field including faculty as well as students.

Alan Steeves took home the “Best Curriculum Paper Award” and he was also recognized with the “Distinguished PACE Integrator Award” for setting up a global collaborative design network.

“I am very honoured to be recognized with both awards,” said Steeves. “The Integrator Award is not given out annually and has only been given twice before.”

In addition to international recognition, UBC Mechanical Engineering will receive generous gifts from PACE partners including Hewlett Packard, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Autodesk and GM.

University of British Columbia researchers have invented a sports helmet that reduces direct impact to the neck by up to 56 per cent, according to preliminary tests.

Dubbed Pro-Neck-TorTM, the patent-pending technology features a movable inner shell that guides the head to tilt slightly forward or backward in a head-on impact, thus allowing dissipation of direct loads to the cervical spine. The inner shell mechanism is deployed only when the wearer lands head-first with a certain speed and angle at impact. It works otherwise like existing sports helmets.

For an animation of how the helmet works, visit www.pronecktor.com.

“Existing helmets are not designed to protect the neck and the cervical region of the spine, which happens to be the weakest,” says co-inventor Peter Cripton, a Mechanical Engineering assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Science.

“Pro-Neck-Tor is designed to address potentially debilitating injuries to the neck and spine that often accompany head-first impacts,” says Cripton, who is also director of the UBC Injury Biomechanics Laboratory, with facilities at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.