Fast-Track Students Win National Design Awards

Three Fast-Track Systems Engineering and Management (SEM) students recently won top honors at a recent national ASME conference held in June 2019. Monica Dallacasa BS’19 was part of a UTDesign team that won first prize for creating a glue dispensing system and assembly process for sponsor Corning Inc. Team lead Elizabeth Labra BS’19 and Nicole Maly BS’19 were part of another UTDesign team that took second place at the same conference. Their team created an automated machine that could remove a 1- to 2-foot sample of plastic insulation from a moving cable for sponsor Encore Wire Corp.

Dallacasa and Labra each received $3,000 Fast Track Scholarships to complete their master’s degrees in SEM at UT Dallas. The Fast Track program is designed to attract and retain high performing undergraduate students who wish to complete master’s degrees in SEM while completing bachelor’s degree coursework.

“Being able to work on a company-sponsored project exposed me to what it is like to work on a real engineering project in a hands-on manner that I had previously not been able to do,” Labra said. “UTD’s other engineering courses provided a solid foundation, and, after working on this project, I feel more prepared than ever to enter the workforce as an effective engineer.”

Read the original News Center story here.