ROLLE, Switzerland – In the culmination of the sixth annual Honeywell/SAE Student Automotive Design Challenge (SADC), local students from China, Romania and Mexico won first, second and third place respectively in the international challenge.
 
‘The Rescue Car’ project from Zhangjiang Experimental High School in Shanghai, China; ‘Fast Fun Toys Corporation’ from Sfantul Vasile Secondary School in Ploiesti, Romania; and, ‘Sala’s Motors’ from Colegio Americano de Mexicali from Mexico, were chosen by more than 1,000 global Honeywell employees in a global online vote as the top three entries in the 2013 SADC event. Each student group will be recognized with an award ceremony from the local Honeywell plant that sponsored the school in this year’s program.
 
"With this international SADC challenge, we aim to inspire classrooms and show kids that the knowledge they acquire from their studies can be applied in a real – and fun – way," said Honeywell Transportation Systems Chief Technology Officer Karl-Heinz Bauer. "For the past six years, we’ve been able to mentor nearly 2,000 students from all over the globe to show them the endless possibilities of math and science and maybe inspired the next generation of automotive engineers and technology professionals."
 
The SADC is a co-sponsored program between Honeywell and SAE International, in which small groups of middle school students ages 11 to 14 execute a multi-disciplinary curriculum into the development of their final project. During the six- to eight-week in-class school curriculum, the students are connected to Honeywell engineers, who mentor and guide them through this process, giving the students an opportunity to connect and engage with the automotive industry.
 
More than 75 Honeywell volunteers assisted approximately 300 students across Europe, North America and Asia in the challenge to develop and present a model of a working toy car, made to meet performance criteria and appealing to a market need.
 
For more information, and videos of winning entries, please visit the Honeywell SADC Challenge website at http://www.honeywell-sae.com/.