competitions

Igor Kraguljac ’08, a former Master of Science in Visualization student at Texas A&M, won first prize in a national photography contest sponsored by Rangerfinder magazine with “Angel,” an image from his chiaroschuro series exploring the Renaissance-era artistic technique.

Staff at the Texas A&M College of Architecture Digital Fabrication Facility, aka Architecture Ranch, helped engineering students build a hybrid race car that won first place in a contest at a NASCAR track in New Hampshire. The car's carbon fiber body panels were fabricated on the CNC mill.

Southern Ellis, who holds two design degrees from Texas A&M, will be at HKS Inc.’s Dallas office working on healthcare projects and performing research as its 2011-12 healthcare fellow. “I have found an amazing opportunity to directly affect the lives of people through the creation of healing environments,” said Ellis.

Tall Furniture, a new kind of stage furniture designed and built by former student Bob Turek ’08, won first place in the do-it-yourself category of the Core77 Design Awards, which recognizes excellence in all areas of design enterprise.

Landscape architecture students’ designs of educational butterfly gardens and a master plan-level analysis of “green,” low-impact development techniques for a portion of the university campus earned awards from the Texas chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Graduate visualization students won scholarships for their makers funded by major animation studios and former student animators. Former students at Pixar, DreamWorks Animation and Industrial Light and Magic made lists of the videos they deemed the best.

Four teams of construction science students charged with developing a lean construction delivery schedule for a new jail presented their work to a jury of industry professionals in a competition at the Texas A&M System offices.

An idea to rent folding bicycles from a kiosk earned first prize and $3000 for Patrick Daniels, a Master of Science in Land Development student, and Martin Griggs, a Master of Urban Planning student, in the 2011 Ideas Challenge, sponsored by the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship.

Members of the Texas A&M student chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association conducted an energy audit of Neeley Hall, a campus dormitory, as part of their competition entry in the NECA's annual 2011 Green Energy Challenge. Finalists will present their work at the Oct. 22–25 NECA Convention in San Diego.

A photo of senior visualization major Jill Bragdon sporting a “Texas Aggies Go Far” T-shirt in Rome earned first place in a photo contest sponsored by The Texas A&M Foundation, which asked students studying abroad to submit photos of themselves wearing the contest T-shirt at international locales.

Now that her senior thesis examining why great logos are memorable was named one of the year’s best undergraduate scholarly works at Texas A&M University, senior environmental design major Lori Lampe said her next major undertaking will be landing a job as a graphic designer or working for an architecture firm.

“The Bricklayer’s Disaster,” an animated short created by graduate students at Texas A&M’s Department of Visualization, earned the 3D Animation Award at the Animex International Festival of Animation and Computer Games in Middlesbrough, England.

Chris Clark, a freshman environmental design major, won a national clay target shooting contest at San Antonio's National Shooting Complex March 31-April 4, 2011. In the final round of the international trap finals, Clark wrested the lead from Black Tripplett of Bethel University.

Construction science students at Texas A&M developed construction plans for an Austin theater to finish second in a field of 11 teams at an Associated Schools of Construction Region V student competition held February 2011 in Dallas. The Aggie competition team was sponsored by Joeris General Contractors, Inc.

A team from Texas A&M reached the semifinal round of a worldwide competition seeking university students' ideas to solve social and environmental problems. Their idea involved kids trading points they’d earned playing video games for donations to charitable causes.