UMass Amherst Student Chapter of ASME Excels at National Design Competitions
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The University of Massachusetts Amherst student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) recently achieved outstanding results at two national ASME design competitions held at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. UMass teams earned first place in the Student Design Competition (SDC) and fourth place in the Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D (IAM3D) Competition. The first-place SDC team engineered a trash-collection and distribution robot, while the IAM3D team developed a metal-collecting rover.
In addition to the national title, the UMass SDC team received a $1,000 prize and ASME Digital Badges (learn more about digital badges).
The competitions were featured events at ASME EFx® (Engineering Fest), a national conference themed “Think Outside the Box” that explored the impact of innovation and entrepreneurship. According to ASME, the conference provided students and early-career engineers with opportunities to engage in technical programming, career and professional development, competitions, networking activities, and more.
The two design competitions served as highlights of the festival. As the UMass ASME student chapter explained on LinkedIn, “Throughout this academic year, both teams were able to build [robots] to accomplish different tasks. The UMass SDC Team designed a trash-collection and distribution robot that was able to scale a model city and dispose of trash and recycling. The UMass IAM3D Team designed a rover that was able to transverse through sand, picking up metals of various weights through FPV [or first-person view, a method of operating a remote vehicle from the pilot’s perspective using a live video feed].”
The student chapter also noted, “Incredible work was done by our teams during the year and during competition. Special thanks to the staff at the Riccio College of Engineering who helped our team with equipment, purchasing, and travel. Thank you to all who donated in the MinuteFund as well, we could not have achieved this without your support. We're proud to represent UMass and appreciate everyone who helped make it possible.”
As ASME explains, the Student Design Competition “provides a platform for ASME student members to present their solutions to a range of design problems, from everyday household tasks to groundbreaking space exploration. Each team is required to design, construct, and operate a prototype that meets the requirements of an annually determined problem statement.”
According to ASME, “The ASME Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D Challenge is designed to give mechanical and multi-disciplinary undergraduate students around the world an opportunity to re-engineer existing products or create new designs. Students competing in IAM3D® will showcase their creativity by demonstrating the value added through their ingenuity, application of sound engineering-design principles, and leveraging additive-manufacturing technologies.”
The mission of the ASME student chapter at UMass Amherst “is to help bridge the gap between the academic classroom and a career in mechanical engineering. Through extracurricular activities, student members will be able to build and apply their engineering skills, as well as see how they can integrate these skills into a professional setting.”
As part of that mission, “Our UMass Student Design Teams compete annually against other ASME student groups from colleges and universities across the country in a competition run by the national ASME organization.” (June 2026)