UMaine to Host Regional Chemical Engineering Conference, Competition
Contact: Hemant Pendse, (207) 949-1007; Thomas Schwartz (student), (978) 944-0568; Aimee Dolloff, (207) 581-3777
ORONO, Maine – The University of Maine is set to host the Regional Student Conference of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) March 26-27.
Part of the conference will be the annual Chem-E Car competition, at which UMaine has performed well in previous years.
The Chem-E-Car event will be held from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 27, at UMaine’s Lengyel Gym. Preparation will take place from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. and would be a good time for media to view the cars and conduct interviews with students.
In addition to UMaine, teams from The University of Massachusetts Amherst, Northeastern University, The University of Rhode Island, Clarkson University, and University of New Haven are scheduled to compete.
AIChE’s regional student conferences offer students the opportunity to network with professionals from industry and academia, explore potential career paths, and expand their knowledge of the chemical engineering field. Attendees meet other students from their region to share experiences and exchange ideas on how to run successful AIChE student chapters. Each year nine regional conferences take place during the spring.
The idea behind AIChE’s Chem-E Car competition is to inspire student teams to apply their knowledge of chemical engineering to create an alternative fuel vehicle capable of transporting a payload a specific distance.
The design, construction and testing of the UMaine’s cars has required hundreds of hours of work by the student team members, who collaborated under the guidance of chemical and biological engineering professor John Hwalek.