UBC Engineers place third in ASHRAE Competition

UBC’s ASHRAE Design Team— Ara Beittoei, Brent Kavelaars, Chu Lin, Jensen Metchie, and Tapio Pikkarainen —placed third in the 2009 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Student Design Project Competition.

The UBC team competed against 14 others in the HVAC System Design category and tied with University of Central Florida as the third-place winner.

The prize includes a trip for one team representative to attend ASHRAE's January 2010 meeting in Orlando, Florida where the award will be presented.

The team is affiliated with the Mechanical Engineering Design Project (MECH 457) course, where students work on a variety of design projects including HVAC design.

The project was supervised by Department of Mechanical Engineering Instructor Nima Atabaki, Ph.D., P.Eng., and Omicron’s Geoff McDonell, P.Eng., served as industrial mentor to the team.

Parisa Bastani named Wesbrook Scholar

UBC Mechanical Engineering fourth year student Parisa Bastani was named one of this year's Wesbrook Scholars. Reserved for no more than twenty students in the University each year, the prestigious Wesbrook Scholar designation recognizes outstanding achievement.

Wesbrook Scholars must rank in the top 10 percent of their class, and possess the ability to serve, work with and lead others. In addition to be an outstanding academic student, Bastani is the Captain of the Formula UBC student team, which builds an open-wheeled race car for the Society of Automotive Engineers' annual collegiate competition. She is also Chair of the Engineering Student Team Council, and a member of many student committees. Her recent achievements include winning, with her collaborators, the Best Engineering Track Paper at the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE) Global Annual Forum.

The Wesbrook Scholar awards are sponsored by the Wesbrook Society, an organization of the university's major benefactors.