Engineering students win awards for brake-through technology
by Mary-Lou Leidl

Imagine designing and building electromagnetic car brakes that perform better, respond faster and are kinder to the environment. That's exactly what a team of UVic mechanical engineering students did, and for their efforts they won a top award at the Advanced Systems Institute of BC (ASI) Exchange 2004 in Vancouver last month.

David Cruz, Luis da Luz and Stephen Ferguson received one of three ASI Innovation Awards for their research on magnetorheological and eddy current brakes.

The award honours university researchers and emerging companies for developing outstanding new technologies. Recipients are chosen based on their ability to show that their technologies are highly innovative and have potential for commercial success.

Three UVic students also won two of 15 ASI Exchange Communications Awards selected from more than 120 projects in the graduate category.
Gonçalo Pedro and his teammate Marc Secanell won the $500 communications award for their research using computational tools to modify existing aircraft design and to create new ones that are more efficient, environmentally friendly and secure.

Glenn Mahoney, a UVic graduate student in computer sciences, received a communications award for his presentation on some leading edge research that uses computational models to evaluate trust in networked environments.