News Release
Contact: Chris McManes
Senior Public Relations Coordinator
Phone: + 1 202 785 0017, ext. 8356
E-Mail:
c.mcmanes@ieee.org
California Middle School Wins IEEE-USA Future
City Competition Award
WASHINGTON (25 February 2005)
— Martin
Luther King Jr. Middle School of Oceanside,
Calif., won the fifth IEEE-USA Best
Communications System Award at the national
finals of the National Engineers Week Future
City Competition on Wednesday. The honor, one of
31 special awards presented at the Hyatt Regency
Crystal City in Arlington, Va., was for the most
"efficient and accurate communications system."
Students Karina Coscuna, Alisa Wyman and Peter
Vo comprised the team with King teacher sponsor
Joanne Norlander and engineer mentor Paul Vo.
The team advanced to Washington by winning the
Southern California regional competition last
month. Its city, Constante Fonte (Portuguese for
"Constant Source"), is set in the Amazon rain
forest in 2150.
The city's "NET" communications system, which
stands for "Nano Ear and Teeth," consists of a
nanotechnology-based chip embedded in a person's
eardrum and tooth. A wireless voice signal is
transmitted to a communications tower, then to
the "head end" at city hall, back to a tower and
out to the recipient. The system, as described
by the students, can translate any language into
the hearer's native tongue.
The award, funded by the IEEE-USA Precollege
Education Committee, was judged by IEEE members
Lowell Smith of Fairfax, Va., Lee Stogner of
Greenville, S.C., and Ananthram Swami of Silver
Spring, Md.
"The students' ideas were practical and they had
a good grounding in what was possible," Stogner
said. "They recognized they had to build on an
existing technology to provide a communications
infrastructure that people could use in the
office and on a personal level."
IEEE Senior Member Michael Andrews, co-regional
coordinator of the Phoenix area competition,
presented each team member with a plaque. Each
student will also receive a $100 U.S. Savings
Bond. King also garnered the Most Innovative
Power Generation System Award from the U.S. Navy
Nuclear Propulsion Program.
Other IEEE members serving as regional
coordinators included Jean Eason (Dallas/Fort
Worth); Todd Hiemer (Oklahoma); Osama Mohammed
(Florida); and Zafar Taqvi (Houston).
The Future City Competition, which IEEE-USA
introduced to Engineers Week in 1993, is
designed to encourage the future generation of
engineers. Seventh and eighth grade students
create their own vision of a city of tomorrow,
working first on computer and then constructing
three-dimensional scale models. About 30,000
students competed this past year. A longitudinal
study of the Future City Competition, funded by
the IEEE in 2004, found that half f the
respondents who had participated in the
competition said they would like to pursue
engineering in high school and college.
Louisiana regional champion St. Thomas More
School won the overall competition Wednesday. Go
to
www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/2005_FC_champions.shtml
for more information.
IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the IEEE.
It was created in 1973 to advance the public
good and promote the careers and public policy
interests of the more than 220,000 technology
professionals who are U.S. members of he IEEE.
The IEEE is the world's largest technical
professional society. For more information, go
to
www.ieeeusa.org.
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