The University of Saskatchewan Innovative Energy Team, in conjunction with the Edwards Business Students’ Society is proud to announce that the University of Saskatchewan has won second place in the Alberta Energy Challenge. The competition took place this past weekend (September 25th, 2016), and marks the first year that the University of Saskatchewan has placed in this international competition.

This year’s U of S team consisted of two engineering and two business students, all from varying disciplines. Included in this group was Alex Barnes, 2nd year Mechanical Engineering with a background in geophysics, Travis Smit, 3rd year Operations Management, Brianna Vance, 4th year Accounting, and Alex Yaskowich, 4th year Chemical Engineering with a focus on mining and mineral processing.

Teams were presented with a case study regarding how Cenovus Energy should diversify their investment portfolio while maintaining a focus on the oil and gas industry in this changing economic and political landscape. Their presentation won them second place out of eight teams, including teams from the United States.

This is the first year that USIET has been involved with this competition, in collaboration with the Edwards Business Students’ Society. The goal of this year’s team was to combine engineering students’ technical skills with the business students’ knowledge to create a stronger, more diverse team. USIET’s involvement in this year’s competition was to help provide funding as well as the engineering students necessary for the competition. USIET President Mike Trask, had this to say about the team’s success, “I am extremely pleased to see the collaboration between engineering and business students, and the successes of my friends and colleagues at AEC. We look forward to helping put together a winning team for next year’s competition.”

The Alberta Energy Challenge (AEC) is a competition focused on exploring the opportunities and challenges in the energy sector. The competition brings together top students in commerce and engineering internationally and provides them with an unparalleled experience in energy and the environment. Students from each participating institution are asked to research and develop a comprehensive solution to a real time challenge presented by one of Alberta’s energy companies. An interdisciplinary panel of industry and academic professionals are available to delegates in order to augment their understanding of key problems and comment on the feasibility of proposed alternatives. The competition concludes with each team presenting their analysis and ideas to a distinguished panel of judges, including senior representatives of sponsoring firms along with professionals from the Alberta energy sector.

The University of Saskatchewan Innovative Energy Team is an engineering student group whose mission is to ignite creativity and passion in future engineers for designing and implementing responsible and sustainable energy sources and practices, from fossil fuels to renewables. For more information on the University of Saskatchewan Innovative Energy team, please visit www.usiet.com.