Mines Electrical Engineering Students Earn Second Place in Regional Circuit Design Competition

The challenge: design a circuit board for a home pet door with an emphasis on safety—within a five-hour time limit.

No prior preparation – just pure reliance on the students’ knowledge, hands-on skills and problem-solving abilities.

That’s exactly what South Dakota Mines senior electrical engineering students Cody Noe and Vincent Mitchell delivered during the recent Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Region 5 Student Competition at Wichita State University. The annual event gathers top student talent for a weekend of innovation, collaboration and professional networking.

The two students from Colton, S.D., earned second place with their unique circuit design that opened the door controlled by a sensor on the pet’s collar.

“You are really relying on what you know and what you can do on the fly,” Noe said.

Each year, the competition challenges students to apply their circuit design and building skills within real-world parameters and constraints, with all teams tackling the same problem.

Noe and Mitchell credited their education at South Dakota Mines for preparing them to face challenges like this confidently.

“We are really taught how to think through problems logically,” Noe said.

Mitchell added that they approached the challenge just as they would a lab assignment at Mines.

Noe and Mitchell competed against 15 other teams spanning across 10 states, which included Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and portions of South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming. More than 30 institutions participated in a variety of competitions from circuit design and ethics to robotics.

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