Fairer sex reigns supreme in Engineering’s Innovation Competition

The fairer sex reigned supreme in this year’s M-Net Jac van der Merwe Competition for Innovation. This annual Innovation prize is awarded to the final-year Matie engineering student with the most innovative project.

On the photo are back from the left Analene Beyers (runner-up), Esmarie Scholtz (winner), Danie Malan and Ryno Beyers. Front from the left are Byron de Villiers and Jean-Jacques Kriel.

 The winner was Industrial Engineering’s Esmarie Scholtz, with runner-up Analene Beyers from Process Engineering close on her heels. They received R11 000 and R5 000 respectively as prize-money. Mr James Bekker was Esmarie’s project leader and Analene’s was Prof Chris Aldrich.

This competition has been sponsored by M-Net for the past 15 years. It was named after Jac van der Merwe, an alumnus of the Faculty of Engineering. He was a founder member of M-Net and was also well-known for his creativity. After his tragic death in an aeroplane crash in 1994, M-Net launched this annual competition in his honour.

Finalists from the six different engineering programmes are selected by their departments to vie for this prestigious prize. Each one has to do a presentation of 15 minutes on his/her project in front of a panel of judges. The panel comprises the Dean of Engineering, a representative of M-Net, and a lecturer from each of the five different engineering departments.

The other finalists were Byron de Villiers (Mechatronic Engineering), Jean-Jacques Kriel (Civil Engineering) and Danie Malan (Mechanical Engineering).

The project titles were:

• Byron de Villiers (Mechatronic Engineering) Automated Shadow Ring apparatus.
• Jean-Jacques Kriel (Civil Engineering) The suitability of using waste and recycled materials as aggregates in concrete.
• Esmarie Scholtz (Industrial Engineering) Multi-objective optimisation in the retail banking industry with stochastic discrete-event simulation.
• Analene Beyers (Process Engineering) Partial oxidation of bacterial sludge in a sonochemical reactor.
• Ryno Beyers (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) A new coaxial to double-ridged waveguide transition.
• Danie Malan (Mechanical Engineering) Solar water heating utilising heat pipes and phase change materials. A design guide.