Former Highland Student Wins Chem-E-Car Competition
Melissa Puga and her team receive their award at Georgia Tech University.
November 20, 2014
Current University of Utah student Melissa Puga knows what it’s like to be the best in the world.
The 2013 graduate of Highland High was one of the main contributors to the University of Utah’s team that won the 2014 AlChE Chem-E-Car competition. On Nov. 16th, 37 teams from universities all over the world – including Malaysia, Poland, Quatar, Korea, and Canada – got together in Atlanta, GA for the largest attended event of its kind.
The teams were all instructed to create a small car that runs on an alternative energy method and stop the car using a chemical reaction. But that’s not it; the car must hold a weight of 244 mL, and stop as close to the distance of 84 feet as possible. Puga was in charge of the reaction team, and designed the Iodine Clock reaction that stopped the weighted car within 2.9 cm of the necessary distance, dominating the field of competition.
AlChE Executive Director June Wispelway described the importance of the competition to the students as: “their first real-world experience in many cases to process safety, and process safety is going to be really important for the rest of their careers.”
But not only did they gain the pride of winning the competition, the team was awarded $2,000 from the AlChE sponsor, Chevron. Scott Fogler, a founder of the Chem-E-Car competition, wanted to make the competition unique.
“I saw a need to have open-ended type problems for the students to address…most of their classwork is closed-ended problems,” Fogler said. “We wanted something that was a two-parameter problem, something they could design.”
Although the team is happy that all their hard work has paid off, Puga is not satisfied.
“Next year we are hoping to make our own batteries to run the car and use a different, more unique stopping mechanism,” Puga said.
Expect continued greatness from the University of Utah’s Chemical Engineering Department and former Ram Melissa Puga.
2014 AlChE Chem-E-Car Competition Video: