Engineering contests seem to be increasing exponentially as schools and businesses focus on promoting engineering as a fun and interesting career choice. One of the more recent additions to the growing pool of engineering contests is the Cornell Cup USA, sponsored by Intel. This contest follows on Intel’s successful Intel Cup China, which attracts more than 26,000 students.
Intel describes the Cornell Cup USA as “a college-level embedded design competition created to empower student teams to become the inventors of the newest innovative applications of embedded technology. The goal of the Cornell Cup is to challenge student design teams to use the latest Intel Atom board to create embedded technology devices that address real-world needs and offer real-world ready solutions worthy of a tech investor’s eye.”
Going into its second year, the Cornell Cup will again take place at Walt Disney World (May 3-4, 2013). Thirty teams from 18 U.S. institutions will demonstrate their creations at this year’s competition. Some of the creations already entered range from leaf-raking robots and water purification systems to brain-controlled health care devices.
Winners will be determined by panel of judges, with the grand prize winner receiving $10,000. Second-place and third-place prizes are $5,000 and $2,500 respectively. The competition is organized by faculty member David Schneider of Cornell’s Systems Engineering Program along with Byron Gillespie, Gabriela Gonzalez and Marc Pepin of Intel Corp.
