Min Khant Zaw and Chris Brissett are engineering students who will be working on building an EV boat model as part of a special competition.
CLARKSTON, Ga.—A group of Perimeter College engineering students in the Clarkston Computing and Engineering Club (CLACEC) have been awarded a $7,000 grant from the American Society of Naval Engineers and the Office of Naval Research to design a remote-control electric boat in a national design competition. Their aim: build a boat that continuously races without stopping for five miles in the fastest time possible.
Min Khant Zaw and Chris Brissett are part of an eight-person team designing the boat. Both students are part of the Regents Engineering Pathway program, which provides an academic foundation for engineering students to successfully transfer to Georgia Tech, Kennesaw State, or other engineering schools in Georgia.
An Honors student and Chevron scholar, Zaw, who also is the CLACEC president, became interested in robotics as a middle school student when he first saw the movie, “Big Hero 6,” he said. He is the team lead for the boat project. Zaw is currently building an autonomous fertilizing robot as part of Georgia State’s Undergraduate Research Experience program.
Brissett, who is a CLACEC networker, first pursued a radiology tech career at Perimeter, before pivoting to go into engineering. He now is a mechanical engineering student who has worked with National Science Foundation-funded brain imaging research with Georgia State’s Center for Translational Research and Neuroimaging.
The design competition will be in April.