“I want to congratulate Zachary, as well as all the other winners who came to visit us on Engineers Day,” said Dr. Rick Sweigard, the college’s associate dean for administration and academic affairs. “Our world faces many challenges, and future engineers like him will be needed to find the solutions we need to build better lives for ourselves.”

Another door prize drawing selected winners for a new digital camera.  The recipients are Bailey Bird, a fifth-grader from Versailles, and Vince May from Lexington.

Engineers Day, or E-day, is an annual celebration of everything engineering has to offer hosted by the University of Kentucky. College groups hold contests for elementary, middle and high school students, and representatives from nearly 40 companies and government agencies provide activities and exhibitions. E-day comes at the end of Engineers Week, a national event dedicated to promoting math and science literacy and ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce. The next Engineers Day will be held on UK’s campus on Feb. 26, 2011.

Contest winners announced

Student and alumni groups sponsored 17 different contests at the day-long event, in which nearly 2,000 visitors filled the College of Engineering on the UK campus.

Rube Goldberg contest

Entrants must build a complex machine that completes a simple task in at least 20 discrete steps. The University of Kentucky College of Engineering Alumni Association sponsored this event.
The first place winner was Matt McCoy, a tenth-grader from Georgetown.

Egg Drop Crash Survivability contest

Entrants must design a container that enables a raw egg to survive a 34-foot fall. Winners are selected based on lightest weight and shortest travel time. The UK student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers sponsored this event.
The first place winner was Elijah Messmer. Second place was Jacob McCain. Third place was Andrew Watts.

Newspaper bridge competition

Entrants must design a bridge using less than one pound of newspaper and tape that is at least two feet long and can support the weight of a phonebook without collapsing. The UK student chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers sponsored this event.
The first place winner was Team 3, consisting of Joe Bleuel and Chase Herrington of Nicholasville Elementary School and Rosenwald-Dunbur Elementary School. The second place winner was Team 23 from Lexington. In third place was Team 1, consisting of Andrew Burgess, Ben Burgess, Sam Burgess and Sam Johnson of Georgetown.

Both LEX 18 News and WKYT 27 Newsfirst were on campus to cover the College of Engineering’s educational outreach event this past weekend. WLEX was on campus as part of the Live with Lee show. Lee Cruse interviewed two engineering graduate students from Kentucky Space, Twyman Clements and Daniel Erb early Friday morning in the Solar Decathlon house about the upcoming E-day and NASA launches.

Clements was eager to share that “out of the nine NASA launches this year we are on five,” while Erb proudly showcased KySAT-1, a cubesat that will be released from a rocket on a mission later this year.

KySAT-1 is a key part of the College of Engineering’s initiative to expand on educational outreach, like E-day. With a camera to support a scientific outreach program intended for students in kindergarten through 12th grade and a 2.4-gigahertz radio, KySAT-1 will be used to test communications, Kentucky’s youth can learn right along with their collegiate counterparts.

Cruse also interviewed Jeffery Kellow, a graduate student in the biosystems and agricultural engineering department who worked on the s.Ky Blue solar house, as well as Sam Nicaise from the Solar Car Team.

Also interviewed by Cruse were Jeffery Kellow, a graduate student in the biosystems and agricultural engineering department, who explained the s.Ky Blue solar house, and electrical engineering senior Samuel Nicaise and mechanical engineering senior Brian Passafiume, who talked about the college’s Solar Car Team.

“You can just see the brain power radiating from that building,” said Chris Goodman, LEX 18 News at Sunrise Co-Anchor, “all those smart engineering students.” The video is available on LEX 18′s web site.

WKYT was on campus Saturday for E-day itself and spoke with Bob Edwards, director of marketing and communications for the College of Engineering, “E-day is a celebration of engineers, what engineers do.” Mark Kennedy reported for the 6 o’clock news that evening that approximately 2,000 people attended this year’s fun and educational activities. The video is available to watch WKYT’s web site.

In 2001, UK alum David Shippy was asked by IBM to head of a team of engineers developing a new microchip to power Sony’s planned PlayStation 3 game console. “I built a world-class design team,” he said, and for the next two years Shippy and the team “worked together, played together, ate dinner together, and went to parties together.” The team worked on a version IBM’s PowerPC chip design, adapting it to their needs. They were building one of the most powerful computer processors around, and he loved every minute of it.

Then in 2003, things changed: Microsoft approached IBM about creating a chip for its planned Xbox 360 console, and Shippy was asked to head that team as well. “I felt like I was betraying the partners at Sony I’d been working with,” he said. “I felt like a double agent, like a spy behind enemy territory.” After finishing work on both chips, Chippy went on to write The Race for a New Game Machine, a book about his experiences, which was published last year.

Shippy spoke the challenges he faced at a reading from the book, which he coauthored with Mickie Phipps, on Friday, Feb. 19 as part of preparations for the College of Engineering’s annual E-day event. A 1983 electrical engineering graduate of the College of Engineering, Shippy stressed the importance of good communication as a skill needed by any aspiring engineering professional.

It was certainly an asset to him while he attempted to navigate the dangerous waters of building two nearly-identical processors for rival companies. “I had all the knowledge of the inner workings of the PlayStation 3, but when Microsoft came in I couldn’t mention any that intellectual property,” he said. Likewise, when dealing with Sony engineers Shippy was bound by nondisclosure agreements not to reveal any of Microsoft’s secrets.

Shippy also stressed the importance of passion and drive, especially in a business context, noting that despite a Sony’s two-year head start Microsoft was able to beat them to market with the Xbox 360 in 2005. Entrepreneurs need to envision their goals and have a positive attitude, Shippy said, in order to attract positive results.

In The Race for a New Game Machine, which has been favorably reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and video game web site GamaSutra, Shippy writes of the stress of walking the tightrope between the two corporations and the challenges he faced united a multinational team of Japanese, German and American engineers.

When both company’s engineers realized they were working alongside their rival’s, there were some tense feelings. “There were a lot of secret meetings and knowing stares,” Shippy said. “Eventually, though, everyone put on their engineer hat and started trying to find the best solution and forgot about who they worked for.”

Shippy said he wrote the book for two reasons. “Simply because it was a cool story that had to be told,” he said. Second, because he wanted to inspire future students to go into a technical field. “Engineering is exciting. It’s fun work. I want to encourage people to follow the path I followed,” he said.

Shippy encouraged the engineering students present to take writing and communication courses in order to make themselves more well-rounded. “Communication is everything,” he said. “Being able to write and being about to communicate well is very important in your engineering career.” In addition to the book, Shippy has written documentation, patents and technical papers over his career. “I also process over 100 e-mails a day,” he said. “And e-mail is all about clarifying your ideas and passing them on to others.”

Today, Shippy works for AMD, another processor maker. In addition to the PowerPC-based processors in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, he also had a hand in designing the chips in Nintendo’s Wii console. He also spent time with Intrinsity, a microprocessor development company that helped Samsung create highly efficient chips to power the company’s media-rich smartphones. His work in designing high-performance computer chip technology also encompasses microprocessor designs for notebook computers, desktop computers, high-end servers and mainframes that have helped change the way people play, work and live.

Shippy’s talk and reading is the second annual lecture to focus on writing by an engineer leading up the College of Engineering’s E-day event. E-day, short for “Engineers Day,” is a daylong celebration of everything engineering has to offer, hosted by the University of Kentucky. College groups host contests for high, middle and elementary school students and representatives from nearly 40 companies and government agencies provide activities for students of all ages. E-day comes at the end of Engineers Week, a national event dedicated to promoting math and science literacy and ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce.

Shippy closed his talk by encouraging students to join outside organizations to build their communication skills while still in school. “Find people who can mentor you and organizations where you can work with teams,” he said. “It’s not just the bullet points on your resume that matter, but your ability to communicate well with others.”