Austin Texas - The Winter Workshop Recap

As mentioned in "What a month!" here's the recap from UWAFT's participation in the Winter Workshop...

The University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team kicked off February by attending the EcoCAR 2 Winter Workshop in Austin, Texas. Two of the engineering competition’s sponsors, Freescale and dSPACE, co-hosted the workshop for the 16 teams, which was held at Freescale’s headquarters.

The Winter Workshop was designed to provide the teams with detailed sessions from competition organizers (such as General Motors, the U.S. Department of Energy and Argonne National Laboratory). Also, sponsors who donated components and software tools to all the teams provided detailed training - dSPACE, A123 Systems, Freescale, AVL Powertrain Engineering, CD-adapco, Siemens, and Vector.

The workshop was also opportunity to put UWAFT and the other teams to the test in their first in-person scored presentations for technical, outreach, and business.

For the technical team, they successfully presented their Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) progress on controlling the stock vehicle in a simulated environment. While the outreach presentations were given to groups of middle school and high school students from the Austin area. There was also a judged youth outreach presentation.

Overall, the Winter Workshop was a hit for everyone involved. Students from each team had plenty of opportunities to network among themselves as well as with representatives from the sponsoring organizations. It also provided an exciting opportunity for the sponsors to learn more about the progress each team as made so far!

UWAFT team at the Winter Workshop pose with the EcoCAR 2 Chevrolet Malibu

What a month!

The month of February has been extremely busy for the University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team (UWAFT). Thankfully 2012 is a leap year so we have an extra day to catch our breath!

At the beginning of February several members of our team attending the Winter Workshop for the EcoCAR 2 competition. A recap post of the workshop will follow...

Upon their return from the Austin, Texas each of the teams in the competition launched their official websites. If you haven't already, check out UWAFT's site at www.uwaft.com.

Following the website launch, the awards for best website were announced February 10th on the Green Garage Blog. The University of Waterloo placed 3rd! The first place prize went to Penn State's website. You can read the announcement here. Congratulations to Denis Pankov, Director of Social Media and everyone on the team that helped him to structure, format, and edit the content of our site.

Then it was Reading Week. A week for our team members to go home or travel, continue working on EcoCAR 2/UWAFT and of course catch up on reading!

With March just a day away, UWAFT is now busier then ever as Year 1 of the competition draws nearer to its end. Look out for more frequent and exciting updates from UWAFT. And don't forget to check us out on any of the following sites. Feedback, comments, questions, likes, and tweets are all welcomed and appreciated!

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Commercializing Innovation with UWAFT

Recently, the University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team (UWAFT) participated in The Canadian Institute’s Forum on Commercializing Cleantech in Toronto, Ontario. The Forum consisted of a series of panel discussions filled with a variety of distinguished industry and government representatives. The event began with a keynote address by Albert Behr, President of Behr and Associates Inc. – a consulting firm that specializes in the commercialization of ‘clean’ technology. Concluding the event was the Honourable Glen Murray, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation, who spoke about due diligence and the cleantech regulatory framework in Canada.

Outreach Coordinator Mark Goody

Team Captain Gurhari Singh and Outreach Coordinator Mark Goody represented UWAFT during the two day event. Unlike past events, which have been focused on campus and community outreach, the forum on Commercializing Cleantech was an industry-based conference. It provided UWAFT with significant learning and networking opportunities. It was also an ideal environment to speak with potential sponsors for UWAFT!

In addition to acquiring valuable business knowledge and industry contacts, Singh and Goody had the opportunity to promote the team and the EcoCAR 2 competition. Alternative fuel technology was a large part of the conference and it is clear that Canada’s industry and government are committed to building a more sustainable transportation future!