On May 20, 55 teams of university students competed at SAMPE '08 in Long Beach, Calif., to determine which team built the strongest lightweight aircraft wing.

Four student teams from the Clark School's department of aerospace engineering entered the Wing Design Build and Test Competition. The one individual and three project teams all placed in the top six, which earned the UM SAMPE Student Chapter more than $700 in prize money:

2nd Place: Ben Woods, PhD student

3rd Place: Team Y: Jeffrey Pace, Peter Rohr, Pat O'Connor, Brian Patrick, Roberto Semidey, Chris Schooler

4th Place: Team Omega: Nathaniel Brown, Brandon Geraghty, Brandon Hall, Anish Sydney, Ian Higgins, Emin Azariah

6th Place: Team X: Frank Graham, Ria Malhan, Ilmo Koo, Anand Saxena, Lina Castano, Jay Sanchez, Byungseok Yoo

The three project teams were from aerospace Professor Norman Wereley's ENAE-425/654 Mechanics of Composite Structures class.