(202a) AIChE/CACHE Mobile Device APP Competition

This presentation will report on the effort to start the first AIChE/CACHE mobile device App competition The objective of this competition is:

• To give students practice at developing their creative skills.
• To enhance and promote student’s interest in new mobile device APPs for use in professional activities.
• To provide chemical engineering students with the opportunity to participate in a multidisciplinary team-oriented software design competition.
• To encourage students to become actively involved in their professional society.
• To show the connection between chemical engineering and society needs.
• To create useful mobile applications for the chemical engineering community.

National Competition

Undergraduate student teams will create an APP for a mobile device.  This APP must be deemed to be useful for an AIChE member.  Possible application areas include scientific,
engineering, teaching and professional meeting organizers.  Teaching apps could include a game designed to teach chemical engineering concepts.  The APP that is developed must be able to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry etc.)  Student teams can consist of any discipline, but at least half of the team must be members of AIChE.
The competition at the AIChE annual meeting will consist of a poster competition where finalists will be selected to give a short presentation to a general audience.  There will be two prizes, with monetary awards given to the student team’s AIChE chapter:  

1. $500 from CACHE for the first place winner of the best mobile device APP
2. $500 from a corporate sponsor for the best mobile device APP that addresses safety. 
   Intellectual Property of the APP remains with the students who developed the APP. 

Rules

• Student teams must consist of fulltime students
• Student teams can consist of any discipline, but at least half of the team must be members of the AIChE
• Student developed APPs can be constructed using existing software templates and components.
• The final APP must be an original creation of the team.
• Submissions must comply with intellectual property rules (e.g. copyright etc.)
• The student team must have at least one team member presenting at Annual Meeting.
• The App must be able to run on a mobile device that uses one of these operating Systems: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm, Symbian, or Windows Mobile.
• Timeline:
  • APP and Technical Documentation Submission 1 June 2012 through website upload (details to be announced)
  • Poster Competition – 10/28/12 Pittsburgh, PA

Judging of the overall competition will be based on:

• Creativity and uniqueness of the APP (15%)
• Usefulness of the APP (20%)
• Ease of use of the APP(15%)
• Professional and/or Societal Impact of APP (20%)
• Poster Presentation which includes demonstration of APP on a mobile device at AIChE Annual Meeting (30%)

Judging of Electronic Submission portion of the APP competition

• Submission deadline 1 June 2012; submission instructions will be announced at a later date
• Technical documentation containing
  • Description of the APP and equations used including screen shots
  • Sources of technical information and physical properties
  • Sources of software components that were used in APP
  • Flow chart illustrating how the APP works
  • Sufficient worked-out examples to verifying the utility of the APP
  • Broad impacts of chemical engineering on society
• APP Code