Vaughn Students, Graduates to Present Papers at Global Conference

July 28, 2011

Two current Vaughn College students and three May 2011 graduates have been selected to present research papers at the prestigious Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) conference next week.

Vaughn seniors Brian Linhares and Chandra Mauli Nautiyal will present their paper "Mechatronics in the Advancement of Transportation Security" while graduates Marvin Blackman, Shahidul Islam and Joseph Kamel will deliver "A PLC Automated Security Checkpoint" to one of the largest gatherings of engineering professionals in the Latin American world.

The three-day conference begins Wednesday (Aug. 3) in Medellin, Colombia. All five studied or are studying mechatronics engineering.

"All of these students are very creative and serious about their education," said Professor Hossein Rahemi, chair of Vaughn's engineering and technology department and faculty adviser to all five. "It's a great reward for them."

Linhares and Nautiyal present several transportation security possibilities in their paper, including a mobile utility that can sniff out chemicals favored by terrorists. They, and two other Vaughn students, KinLok Poon and Marlon Medford, placed third at the LACCEI competition last year, demonstrating a crowd control robot, manufactured from a toy gun, that can be used by law enforcement.

In their paper, Blackman, Islam and Kamel demonstrate how a programmable logic controller, or PLC, can be used to improve the efficiency and safety of airport baggage systems. Their presentation won the top student prize at the American Society for Engineering Education's sectional meeting in April and was demonstrated to local professionals at Vaughn's Technology Day, also in April.

Click here to read the Vaughn student papers.