SPE ACCE announces call for student poster competition abstracts

Photo Credit: SPE ACCE

The organizing committee for the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE, Brookfield, Conn., U.S.) Automotive Composites Conference & Expo (ACCE, Detroit, Mich., U.S.) invites graduate, undergraduate, community college and high school students to submit abstracts on innovative composites technologies, for automotive and ground transportation, for its annual student poster competition. The competition will be held during the ACCE at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan (in the Detroit suburbs) Sept. 8-10, 2021.

Industry-expert judges, SPE board members and members of the media will review all posters with student authors on the first day of the conference, Sept. 8, 2021. First-, second-, and third-place awards will be presented to winners in graduate, undergraduate and high school categories during a special ceremony on the event’s second day, Sept. 9, 2021.

Students interested in participating in the competition should contact Dr. Uday Vaidya at ACCEposters@speautomotive.com. Vaidya is the ACCE student poster competition chair as well as CTO of Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, Tenn., U.S.) and professor and governor’s chair of Advanced Composites Manufacturing at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Abstracts are due by July 1, 2021. Digital copies of posters are due by August 20, 2021 for pre-review by judges. Students will need to bring printed copies of their posters to the conference, which they can attend free of charge. All students in the competition will also receive a partial travel stipend and a shared hotel room provided by SPE, as well as free student membership in SPE.

Large multi-poster panels and push pins for displaying the posters in the Student Poster Display area will be provided. SPE organizers add that the show also provides excellent networking opportunities for those close to graduating who are starting to look for a job. The poster template is online here.

Poster topics may include subjects such as:

Automotive composites
Composites and lightweight materials for trucks
Bio-composites
Nanocomposites
Glass, carbon, and hybrid fibers
Thermoset and thermoplastic technologies
Recycling and green technologies
Multi-materials
Joining technologies
Modeling and analysis of lightweight materials
CAFE standards and mandates
Cost-effective manufacturing
Use of advanced materials in innovative applications
Virtual prototyping and design
Microstructure, failure and fracture
Failure envelopes and theories
Additive manufacturing of composites

Students and their posters are ranked according to the following criteria:

Content (student and poster demonstrate clarity of topic, objectives and background);
Motivation for research and technical relevance to conference theme;
Methodology and approach to problem;
Quality of proposed research results/findings;
Conclusions are supported by information presented;
Presentation (display aesthetics are pleasing and there is a logical flow between sections);
Knowledgeable (presenter has a good grasp of the subject);
Understandability (poster is effective even without student being present to explain it); and
Overall rank versus other posters and presenters.