Each winning student from the paper competition is shown above with their certificates. From left to right: Alex Burkholder (teammate of 3rd place), Cindy Durliat (3rd place), Elijah Abban-Baidoo (2nd place), Brooke Zajac (1st place), and Sean Bentley (Region 1 Life Member Coordinator).
In March 2026, over 300 people came together at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ, for the IEEE Regions 1 & 2 Student Activities Conference. The vast majority of attendees were IEEE student members from 35 colleges and universities, joined by IEEE student branch advisors and IEEE volunteers.
The conference opened with a twelve-hour Hackathon, with teams working all night to solve the challenge. The second day was full of workshops, covering everything from interview skills to programming and robotics. The conference also included sessions for student branch leaders, a project showcase, a WIE panel, and dedicated networking time. Much of the day focused on competitions, including SumoBot, Brown Bag Electronics, Paper, MicroMouse, Mini Pupper Tug-of-War, and Ethics competitions. The conference concluded with a banquet with a keynote speaker and awards. Each competition awarded the top three spots $500, $300, and $200. A complete list of winners is available on the conference website.
Among the competitions, the Life Member Committee sponsored awards for the top three prizes in the paper competition and the top prize in the MicroMouse competition. The paper competition encourages students to present their original engineering and technology ideas in the form of a technical paper, helping them build research and communication skills. They submitted their papers in advance and then presented the work to a panel of judges at the conference. The Micromouse competition gives students hands-on robotics experience by challenging teams to design and program an autonomous robot to navigate a maze.
The winning team, shown celebrating their success below, was from the University of Scranton. The team members are (left to right) Noah Millett, Carlton Hackett, and Ryan Merlo.
Pictured below (left to right) are Craig Polk (IEEE Future Networks), Brooke Zajac (York College of Pennsylvania), Sean Bentley (Region 1 Life Member Coordinator), and Kevin Lu (Region 1 Student Activities Coordinator). Craig, Sean, and Kevin reviewed the paper competition, and Brooke was awarded first place for “Software-Defined Radio: Filters and Amplifier.”
Paper Competition 2nd: “Accessible Framework for AI-Powered Customer Support: Performance and Linguistic Analysis,” Elijah Abban-Baidoo (presenter, pictured below) and Debapriya Hazra, Montclair State University
Paper Competition 3rd: “Project BOREALIS: A Hybrid, User-Focused Music Synthesizer,” Alex Burkholder, Ethan Berei, and Cindy Durliat (presenter, pictured below), Ohio Northern University.
