Senior Design Team Wins Professional Conference Award

SOCORRO, N.M. June 10, 2013 – A New Mexico Tech team of mechanical engineering students won third place for their presentation at a design conference in April.

The “Reduced-Cost Heliostat” team presented their technical paper at the IEEE Green Tech Energy Conference.

Team leader Tim Rushenberg gave the 20-minute presentation. His co-authors included current and former students Nicholas Alvarez, Andrew Smith, David Patterson, Niall Norton-Cormier and Harry Hupman and faculty member Dr. David Grow.

“They won against professionals,” department chair and team advisor Dr. Warren Ostergren said. “This wasn’t a student award. And their feedback was about how well they presented their material among this large group of experienced engineers and scientists.”

Tech students have been working on this project for more than five years and are currently finishing their second prototype. A heliostat is a mirror that focuses sunlight on a central point. Normally, an array - or field of heliostats - track the sun throughout the day, focusing light on a single point atop a tower in the center of the array. The tower collects the solar energy, then powers a turbine to generate electricity or...