May 29, 2008

Contact: Amy Hewes
College of Engineering
805-756-6402
ahewes@calpoly.edu

Cal Poly Industrial Engineering Student Wins International Technical Paper Competition

Claire Dooley, an industrial engineering senior at Cal Poly, recently won a highly competitive international student technical paper contest sponsored by the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE).

Dooley, one of fourteen finalists, presented her paper, "Surface Mount Technology Optimization for Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing at Alcon Labs," at the IIE Annual Conference & Expo was held May17-21, 2008 in Vancouver, Canada.

"My technical paper is based on my senior project, which I completed while on a six-month co-op at Alcon Labs," says Dooley. "The project demonstrated the benefits of using optimization techniques to improve the efficiency of automated surface-mount technology component placement equipment in the printed circuit board manufacturing line."

Dooley attended the IIE conference with fifteen other IE students and two faculty members. The Cal Poly contingent was the largest from any university represented at the conference, which is the most significant event of the year for the IIE.

"After winning the IIE Regional Conference's competition, held at Cal Poly this winter, I was really looking forward to participating in the International Conference," Dooley says. "There were a number of outstanding student technical papers presented by industrial engineering students from all over the world. I was excited and surprised when they announced me the competition winner, and am humbled to accept the award on behalf of Cal Poly's IME department."

Graduating in June, Dooley will begin working at Deloitte Consulting in San Francisco as a Business Technology Analyst at the end of July."