WASHINGTON (22 February 2008) — Queen of Angels Catholic School of Roswell, Ga., won the Best Essay Award at the National Engineers Week Future City Competition National Finals on Wednesday.

The IEEE sponsored the essay competition, which featured the 36 Future City regional-winning middle school teams that advanced to the finals at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill.

The team included students Joel Anderson, Elliott Brewer and Reed Scott, teacher-sponsor Peggy DeGance and engineer-mentor Catherine Anderson. IEEE-USA President Russ Lefevre presented each team member with a plaque.

Teams competing at the Future City finals had to write an essay as part of the overall judging. This year's topic was "Keeping Our Future City's Infrastructure Healthy: Using Nanotechnology to Monitor City Structures and Systems."

Queen of Angels' city, "Makt Stad" — Swedish for "Power City" — is set in 2215. Its water system uses nanosensors to monitor for disease-causing bacteria, e.g., e-coli, salmonella and giardia; toxic contaminants like cyanide, thallium and xylenes; harmful living organisms such as plankton; and bioterrorism agents, namely "botulism, smallpox, anthrax, plague, viral hemorrhagic fevers and tularemia."

If the intake filters get clogged and water flow decreases by five percent, "the nanosensors will activate a filter cleaner and e-mail a cleaning report to the system controller." The water is suctioned into a holding tank, where magnetic nanobots are added to heat the contaminants until they are eradicated.

The students then described the role engineers played in designing the water filtration system:

"Mechanical engineers designed the pipe system, holding tanks, filters, and the nanobot delivery/magnetic retrieval system. Electrical engineers designed the power grid for the plant. They also worked with chemical engineers to design the chemical sensors. Robotic engineers manufactured the nanobots that heat up the contaminants. Computer engineers computerized the entire system, minimizing human intervention."

To read the entire Queen of Angels' essay, go to www.futurecity.org/alumni_profiles_maktstad.htm.

The Future City Competition, conceived in IEEE-USA offices in 1992 and staged for the first time during Engineers Week 1993, is designed to encourage the future generation of engineers. Seventh and eighth grade students create their own vision of a future city, working first on computer and then constructing three-dimensional scale models.

More than 1,100 schools and 30,000 students from across the United States competed during the 2007-08 season. Pilot programs are underway in Egypt, Sweden and Japan. A spin-off, "Future Cities 2020," has started in India.

Heritage Middle School of Westerville, Ohio, won the overall competition for their future city, "Ra." See www.futurecity.org or www.eweek.org for additional information.

For more on the early history of the program, visit www.todaysengineer.org/2008/Feb/FCC.asp.

IEEE-USA advances the public good and promotes the careers and public policy interests of more than 215,000 engineers, scientists and allied professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. IEEE-USA is part of the IEEE, the world's largest technical professional society with 370,000 members in 160 countries. See www.ieeeusa.org.

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