At the end of March the Southern California Local Network held our third annual heat for the Present Around The World Competition. The PATW is based around the premise that an engineer can have the greatest idea, but if you can’t explain it to people no one will know about it, so the competition aims to help young professionals improve their presentation skills and rewards competitors based both on technical content and how they present it.
This year’s PATW had some excellent talks making it difficult for the judges to choose a winner and runner up.
Jason Silverman competed in 2015 when he was still studying Astronautical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and it was immediately apparent that he had listened to the feedback from his last presentation as the improvements in content and delivery were noticeable. Although he is employed full time at SpaceX now, Jason is still involved with the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory whose motto, flight on, is an obvious play on the USC Fight On sports team motto.
Jason’s presentation took us through the fundamentals of rocket science covering everything from the rocket equation to nozzle design, the advantages and disadvantages of the four main propulsion types, the structural engineering required and in particular the use of composites to achieve the best strength/mass ratios. The judges were also educated on aerodynamic principles and the challenges of stability crossing the Mach barrier, and of course making sure you can recover everything safely with appropriate avionics, sensors and recovery methods. Jason spent the weekend after the tour in the Mojave for a static firing of one of the RPL rockets (this video is from last year).
Aref Vali is a PhD student working in at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and his excellent talk was on contour crafting. Contour crafting scales 3D printing up to fabricate large components such as simple buildings. Comprised of robotic arms and extrusion nozzles, a computer-controlled nozzle is moved back and forth adding layers of the construction material. This can be done by either placing the nozzle on a gantry or on the end of a robotic arm to build structures either terrestrially or extra terrestrially. We could try and explain more, however Behrokh Khoshnevis who is head of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies can be seen discussing the research at TEDx.
This year’s competition has shown that two essential skills for Engineers, persistence and responding to feedback, has paid off for Jason Silverman who goes on to the regional competition in Toronto later this year. With CSU Fullerton winning three years ago and providing last year’s runner up, Loyola Marymount providing last year’s winner and USC getting a clean sweep this year, who is going to provide next year’s winner?
This year’s PATW had some excellent talks making it difficult for the judges to choose a winner and runner up.
Jason Silverman competed in 2015 when he was still studying Astronautical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and it was immediately apparent that he had listened to the feedback from his last presentation as the improvements in content and delivery were noticeable. Although he is employed full time at SpaceX now, Jason is still involved with the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory whose motto, flight on, is an obvious play on the USC Fight On sports team motto.
Jason’s presentation took us through the fundamentals of rocket science covering everything from the rocket equation to nozzle design, the advantages and disadvantages of the four main propulsion types, the structural engineering required and in particular the use of composites to achieve the best strength/mass ratios. The judges were also educated on aerodynamic principles and the challenges of stability crossing the Mach barrier, and of course making sure you can recover everything safely with appropriate avionics, sensors and recovery methods. Jason spent the weekend after the tour in the Mojave for a static firing of one of the RPL rockets (this video is from last year).
Aref Vali is a PhD student working in at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and his excellent talk was on contour crafting. Contour crafting scales 3D printing up to fabricate large components such as simple buildings. Comprised of robotic arms and extrusion nozzles, a computer-controlled nozzle is moved back and forth adding layers of the construction material. This can be done by either placing the nozzle on a gantry or on the end of a robotic arm to build structures either terrestrially or extra terrestrially. We could try and explain more, however Behrokh Khoshnevis who is head of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies can be seen discussing the research at TEDx.
This year’s competition has shown that two essential skills for Engineers, persistence and responding to feedback, has paid off for Jason Silverman who goes on to the regional competition in Toronto later this year. With CSU Fullerton winning three years ago and providing last year’s runner up, Loyola Marymount providing last year’s winner and USC getting a clean sweep this year, who is going to provide next year’s winner?