The American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) announced its inaugural engineering design competition, developed by its Materials Interest Group in August 2005. Submissions were invited from both graduate and undergraduate students. The competition aims to promote innovative product development from an engineering design perspective.

The theme of this year’s competition was “Design of Engineered Fibrous Structures,” and the contest was divided into three areas:

      Medical/Biomedical Fibrous Structures      Smart/Electronic Fibrous Structures     Protective Fibrous Structures

Entries were evaluated on concept originality, use of engineering design elements, technical feasibility of the concept using best available technologies, quality and clarity of supporting documentation, technical rationale for the assembly materials list, efficacy of proposed commercial process sequence, and viability of economic cost analysis.

Finalists in each category were asked to submit electronic and physical poster boards for final judging which took place on May 1. Winners from the Medical/Biomedical area were announced at the Materials Interest Group meeting, held in conjunction with AATCC research committee meetings, on May 3. Winning entries will be awarded $1,000 for first place and $500 for second place, as well as complimentary student registration for the AATCC International Conference & Exhibition, co-located with MEGATEX, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga. ,USA, October 31-November 2. An article in the July issue of AATCC Review will also feature the competition winners.

WINNERS Medical/Biomedical Fibrous Structures Area   1^st place— SMA-Actuated Multi-DOF Rehabilitation Sleeve by Harold D. Dillow, David J. Janowiecki, Chloe Zhuang Wan, and Marc R. Williams, University of Kentucky       2^nd place— Design of Multilayer Disposable Surgical Gown by Hang Liu and Hong Yu, University of Georgia