Posted on April 5, 2001 at 5:00 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Ten senior electrical engineering students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) recently competed in electronics hardware and software competitions at the annual Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers SoutheastCon Region 3 conference at Clemson University. UAB won first place in both competitions.

Six senior electrical engineering students — Jason Blake, Laura Franklin, Jonathan Glidewell, Cory Hanks, Aaron Ismail and Boon Leau — made up the team in the hardware competition. The students worked since October 2000 to construct a car, equipped with a magnet that could pick up a steel ball, for the competition. In the competition, cars received points for picking up steel balls on a track and placing them in their scoring bin. The UAB students competed against 20 other teams from universities in the Southeast with similar vehicles in the double-elimination contest. The UAB entry survived all of the rounds with no losses.

The software competition was somewhat more difficult for the four remaining senior electrical engineering student team members — Eddie Kominek, Evan Koch, Nate Slabaugh and Chris Whitaker. At the software competition, the students were given a problem to solve and a computer to use. Students did not know the details of the problem until it was revealed at the competition. They had a fixed time during which they had to generate software that solved the given problem. According to the rules, the best, fastest solution won — which was UAB.

Dale Callahan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering was faculty advisor for the team and accompanied the students to Clemson.