Every year, teams from all over the world congregate together, vying for 1st Place in the Spellman HV Clean Tech Competition, with this year being no different. And while the primary reason they are here is to compete for the honor and achievement, we also wish to give them some world class presentations so they may see other aspects of their upcoming career they may never have thought of before! So please, read on below as we give a brief introduction of this years guests as we excitedly count down the final hours until we meet on July 17th!

 

Barry Shoop, PhD

Dean of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering at The Cooper Union

Barry L. Shoop became Dean of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering in January 2019 after retiring as a Brigadier General from a 38-year career in the U.S. Army. For the last 25 years, he served in a number of key leadership roles at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point including Director of the Photonics Research Center, Director of the Electrical Engineering Program and most recently as Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Shoop received the B.S. degree from the Pennsylvania State University and Ph.D. from Stanford University, both in electrical engineering. His research interests include optical information processing, neural networks, image processing, disruptive innovations and educational pedagogy.

 

Nicholas A. Kumbatovic, P.E., LEED AP

President of Cameron Engineering & Associates of New York, PLLC

Mr. Kumbatovic’s primary responsibility is the management and detailed design of mechanical, electrical and security/IT/AV engineering systems for private, commercial and municipal projects. As an electrical engineer, he is fully experienced in electrical systems including lighting, power, emergency power including generators, transfer switches, UPS systems, fire alarm systems, information systems (IT), telephone systems, site utility power, life safety systems, security systems, digital video surveillance systems, perimeter fence security systems, and all types of interior and exterior lighting systems.

He is involved in the Firm’s mechanical, electrical, security/IT/AV and structural engineering design projects for commercial, municipal, correctional, institutional, industrial, healthcare, recreational, base building and tenant services, and educational projects.

 

Alex Urban, PhD

Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University 

Dr. Urban is a computational materials chemist and is interested in materials for clean-energy applications, particularly in materials for batteries and fuel cells. He is also a core member of the Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center,  and an affiliated member of the Columbia Data Science Institute, where his group investigates materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion using a combination of atomic-scale modeling and data science techniques..

 

Francisco de Leon, PhD, IEEE Fellow

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering

After several academic and industry positions in Mexico and Canada, Dr. de Leon came to NYU Tandon in 2007. His main research interest has been the modeling of transformers for electromagnetic transients, and he has done much research on the integration of renewable energy to the grid and the electrification of transportation. He has published over fifty journal papers and twenty conference papers on transformer topics. Other research interests include the analysis of power phenomena under non-sinusoidal conditions, the transient and steady state analyses of power systems, the thermal rating of cables and transformers, and the calculation of electromagnetic fields applied to machine design and modeling.

As we rapidly close down on our 2019 Clean Tech Competition Finals, it would be reticent not to talk a little about the company that has made this all possible over the last few years. 2019 will be the fourth year that Spellman HV Electronics has been the title sponsor of the competition, and in these four years we have seen growth that is in no small part due to them. Their generous support has allowed us to spread the competition further and farther, fulfilling both organizations goals of increasing STEM knowledge and awareness in every corner of the earth. 

Founded in 1947, this family owned company is the worlds leading independent supplier of precision DC high voltage power supplies, X-Ray generators and Monoblock® X-Ray sources for medical, industrial and scientific applications. Essentially, if you have ever been to the doctor and required an X-Ray or MRI, odds are part of it was created and built by Spellman! They are ubiquitous across medical centers and synonymous with high quality equipment, which makes perfect sense when you see how much they have grown in the last 72 years. With production and research centers across the planet, they are the perfect match to a rapidly growing competition that looks to encourage youth research and scientific development. 

While they came into this role as the sponsor, they are far from having a hands off approach to the event. Involved at every point of the process, they have provided judges, insight into expansion, ideas for involvement, speakers and much more. They share our long term goal of finding sustainable solutions to our worldly problems, and they want to help solve this environmental crisis as much as we do. They believe science advocacy is a crucial step in not only this process, but in improving the world as a whole. With their advanced medical technology they have helped heal countless human beings; with their sponsorship of the competition, they are looking to help heal the earth. 

The Clean Tech Competition is proud to be sponsored by Spellman HV Electronics, and it is with them we have seen some of the best years of the event. So if you get the chance, be sure to thank them for everything they have done to advance sustainable solutions to the innumerable problems we face! Check out the video below to learn even more, and maybe get a sneak peak of the facilities our finalists will be lucky enough to tour in just a couple short weeks.

 

On this first day of summer (if you live in the northern hemisphere at least!), we are experiencing the longest time of sunlight of the whole year. While it is sad to think that it only gets shorter from here, it is even more upsetting to think of all that wasted energy coming from those billions of photons flying through space to get here. Solar power is one of the most prominent sources of renewable energy, you experience it almost every day of the year! All it would take to power the entire planet for a full year is 43,000 square miles of solar panels. Which, while it may seem like a lot, really is not when you think of how much surface area there is on the planet. Still, it makes you hope that one day soon we will be able to fully clear ourselves of dirty and inefficient sources of fuel! And maybe, it will be an invention based on research entered into the Clean Tech Competition that makes this change possible! 

This years finals competition will be held at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. This esteemed university is a leading source of education and research in the both the engineering and architectural fields, making it an ideal fit for the location of the 2019 Spellman HV Clean Tech Competition!

Cooper Union is located in the heart of Manhattan in New York City, putting it at a cultural crossroads that is hard to beat across the world. Founded in 1859, this intersection of intellectualism helped drive its founder to make the school open to everyone, regardless of their race, religion or economic class, which was a truly radical and forward thinking idea for its time. It offered free tuition to anyone who was accepted, and even now, most of the students accepted are provided full tuition scholarships for the four year undergraduate degree. 

The school is at the forefront of American ingenuity in its respective fields, and this is made more evident by the uniquely beautiful design of its buildings against the backdrop of the classical modern city design. The Cooper Union is ecstatic to host this years Clean Tech finals, and everyone involved is looking forward to bringing together the bright young minds who have made it this far to this preeminent center of engineering and architecture!

Registration is done! It has been a whirlwind year and we are incredibly happy for all the teams that registered, we could not thank you more! We had hundreds of teams from across the globe enter into the competition and it just goes to prove that caring for the environment and a sustainable future is something that holds no boundaries. So thank you, to every student, every teacher, every parent, anyone who shared a post or told a friend, supported an idea or gave a new one. Thank you for everything you do to help our planet. You are the future we have in store, not the one of ignorance of the past, but inspiration for the future. You are all the reason we are moving Toward A Greener Tomorrow, and the reason we have hope!

We are close to fully announcing our venue, but we can confirm it is in New York City! One of the worlds amazing super cities, everyone at Spellman HV Electronics, Clean Tech Competition and the Center for Science Teaching and Learning are ecstatic to be hosting the event in a location such as this one. If you wish to have your chance at making it here…make sure you submit your papers! They are due April 12th by 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, so do not delay in uploading those to our website!

That is all for now, you will be hearing from me again soon with more info and updates and everything Clean Tech. Talk to you soon!

So, registration is flying along so well, that we have decided to extend it until March 29th, 2019 so everyone who wishes can get in! We have had teams from 35 countries so far, and every continent is represented in the competition this year. WOW!!! That is such an amazing number of people from wildly different cultures and backgrounds, meaning we are sure to have so many incredibly diverse projects submitted to be judges this year. And because we have two categories this year, we will have an even wider array of teams and backgrounds to showcase as compared to previous years. I cannot wait to see what everyone has working in their heads to help us move Toward A Greener Tomorrow.

One thing we have not provided much information on so far however, is the location. We have said it will be in New York City, but an exact spot has not been announced. I promise we have been working extremely hard on this and are in the final stages of locking up what might just be our most exciting location yet…more to come on that hopefully this week! 

That’s all for now, but since the “slow” portion of the competition is almost over, there will be more updates which means more blog posts so stay tuned!

Ok, so, back when I announced the competition, I alluded that I would make a blog post that goes more in depth on why we  chose the theme of “Toward A Greener Tomorrow”, and so I am writing that here today! The idea for the theme came from the feeling that it is too easy to focus on the negative aspects of our current environmental issues. You here how this animal is going extinct, this resource is tougher to find, we are using too much of this or that. But that is not the whole picture, not even close! If there was no positive news related to the environment, we would be much closer to the apocalyptic wasteland many seem to feel we are reaching. But we are not! There is good news every day if you know where to look, and that is why we have a future. Do we have issues? Yes. Will we find more along the way? Undoubtedly. Are they insurmountable? Not at all! Yet if you do not believe there are better days to come, then your efforts are likely to be less than they would be if surrounded in a field of positivity.

“Toward A Greener Tomorrow” represents that feeling, that hope, that drive to look past the negatives. The Clean Tech Competition is oriented to find a greener solution in our evolving world, and the theme of 2019 is to remind us that things will get better, but only if we believe it to be so. I have no doubt that some of the thousands of young scientist that have entered over the last several years will be influential in our planets greener future. Now, it is your turn to help. I cannot wait to see what you have in store!

The 2019 Spellman HV Clean Tech Competition is officially underway, and I for one could not be more excited about this moment! Our topic for this year is: Toward a Greener Tomorrow, and there are so many reasons behind that, and I will devote a whole other blog post to that in the very near future.  Registration starts Wednesday November 21st at 9am, but we are letting you all here know first. We know it has been a long wait to hear this good news, and we thank you for your patience. We have been working on some exciting new things for this year, including TWO categories! Those categories are: Mitigating the Effects of Climate Change and Resource Preservation, two extremely important focuses of our future. This means twice the finalists, twice the prizes, and twice the fun! Bigger and better than ever you ask? You are correct!

 

 

Ok so to explain these changes, the simple answer is that yes, we have grown in size over the years. What started out as a local competition for Singapore, has grown immensely in the last several years.This last Clean Tech Competition saw over 550 teams from 39 different countries enter. While reading all these submissions, it feels like two things. First, that a lot of great ideas were unable to be recognized because competition was so fierce, and we wanted to give those a voice and a chance. Secondly, the inventions and research submitted was over such a wide range of topics, it felt difficult to accurately judge them all under one group. So this year, we decided we wanted to switch that up, and are happy to announce that means that 20 teams will be recipients of monetary prizes this year, as well as have the ability to travel to meet their peers at our finalist event location (more on that in the coming weeks…) 

So, that is the announcement. I could go on about how excited I am to be fully part of this competition this year, but I am sure you have better things to do that listen to that! If you are not finding this for a couple weeks, no worries, registration goes until March 2019 so you have plenty of time to get your team together. The last few months have been quiet, but now that we are in full swing, you will be hearing plenty more from me!

Your CTC Administrator,

Kevin

 

 

Well, it has certainly been a while since you have heard from me! It has been a busy time in the world here at the Center for Science teaching & Learning. We have had more camp sessions, birthday parties, field trips and lessons than we can truly count, so my mind has been quite distracted lately. But rest assured, Clean Tech 2019 is coming together and we are extremely excited about some of the things we have in store! Now I won’t give anything away just yet, but we have been listening to what 2018 competitors and finalists had to say about the process, and we took them to heart. So look out for some changes they came up with…as well as some we have been working on ourselves with some help from Spellman High Voltage Electronics!

I am sure you are all impatiently waiting to hear next years topic, but that time to announce has not yet come to pass. However I promise that it is coming soon! Details will be posted as we update our website, but i can tell you this…mark your calendars for Wednesday November 21st, 2018 at 12pm EST. You will be able to do something then you have probably been dreaming about for quite some time. I know that is not a lot to go on, but for now it will have to do! But again, all the information you are looking for will be coming soon, I swear!

Wow. It is hard to believe that it is really done. The 2018 competition has come to a close, and was it ever amazing! For those of you who may not have been able to find out yet, here are our top three teams from this year:

1st Place: Team Hydrogen Fuel Cells; Danielle Kelly and Audrey Shine, USA

2nd Place: Team Sustainable Future; Benjamin Liao, USA

3rd Place: Team Eilíse Ireland; Eilíse Ireland, Ireland

 

While these three may have received our top prizes, every single team and member that entered is a winner in my book, CSTL’s, Spellman’s, your team leader’s, and hopefully in the most important one of them all…your own! You all went out of your way and put time and effort into doing something that you love and are passionate about. You did this because you want to help save our world. Because you are enthralled with science. Because you wanted to challenge yourself. Because you found something cool to do with a friend. Because of a thousand different reasons, but in the end they all come back to a passion for STEM, and that is exactly what we want! That is the point of this competition! Not because of some prize money (although that is a nice incentive!). You did it because you wanted to. And that is the most important prize of all, a feeling of motivation and passion.

This year was our biggest year yet, and there are so many people to thank for their amazing help. Our sponsors at Spellman High Voltage Electronics, our host at Stony Brook University, our media and relations team, our various donors, the contestants themselves, their team leaders, their parents, the mentors…the list could go on forever. But I am thankful for each and every one of them because they all played a major role in making this possible.

 

Ok, I think I have rambled enough. I am still riding that euphoric wave from last week it seems! Again, thank you to everyone who participated, from the almost 600 submissions from 39 countries. 2018 was one for the books, and were hoping to make 2019 even bigger and better!!!