Among them were Steven M. Martin and Roy H. Olsson III, both PhD candidates at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), who white-knuckled it through the weeks following their submission and ultimately were pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Martin, Olsson and faculty adviser Richard B. Brown, Arthur F. Thurnau professor and interim chairman of EECS at the University of Michigan, took first place in the DAC Student Design Contest conceptual category and further claimed the prize for best overall paper.

Students from more than 22 universities around the world entered designs in both the operational and conceptual categories for this year's competition. Papers had been submitted in December, and winners were notified in mid-February. The prizes were awarded in New Orleans last week during the DAC proceedings.

Waiting game

Martin is familiar with the tense wait after an entry is submitted. In previous years, he said, he couldn't resist checking the contest Web site repeatedly a number of times a day to see whether the results were in. This time, he said, "I tried to forget that I even submitted anything to the contest."

That may be why Martin had to reread the e-mail that said he and his partners had won two first-place prizes.

Student design contests aim to capture the imagination of budding engineers and illustrate what burgeoning IC design talent can do, according to Bryan Ackland, general chairman of the 39th DAC executive committee. Participation is a "very important part of the learning process" for engineering students, said Ackland, vice president of the advanced technology, processing, aggregation and switching division of Agere Systems Inc. (Holmdel, N.J.).

The DAC contest asks students to explain not just their designs but also "the design process, the tools they used and their test methods," Ackland added.

Martin said the contest allows students to "approach a problem with a wild, somewhat off-the-wall idea and then engineer it into a device that we think is manufacturable and cost-effective."

Winning paper

Martin, Olsson and Brown's winning paper describes "A Microsystem for Near-Patient Accelerated Clotting Time Blood Tests." The device described would provide an "inexpensive, disposable means" of performing an accelerated-clotting-time (ACT) test at a patient's bedside.

The ACT test is often used to make sure a patient has been given enough anticoagulant medication during heart surgery to ensure a successful operation. Existing methods of measuring clotting time require centralized lab facilities and the drawing of a large sample of blood. The students set out to devise a bedside method that would involve a smaller blood sample.

The paper describes the device as "an integrated sensor for blood coagulation time measurement" that consists of "a flow channel and read-out circuitry." The one-time-use device was designed to be fabricated using IC-compatible planar processing techniques and to occupy a 3.5 x 3.5-mm die area, the paper said.

Brown said the device comprises a micromachined capillary in a spiral loop. A drop of blood placed on the device is wicked into the capillary loop, where the resistance constantly changes as the blood enters. An analog circuit measures the resistance. When the resistance becomes constant, a signal indicates that the sample blood has clotted.

Inspiration, perspiration

The students worked on the device as part of a VLSI course project. The idea came from professor Brown, who conducts research in solid-state liquid-chemical sensors. The pair spent three weeks readying the DAC entry.

Participants in the DAC contest and others like it have have a lot riding on the outcome. Graduate and undergraduate students from universities worldwide compete for significant prize money, ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars. In addition, there's always the chance that designs might be interesting enough to attract the eye of a company that wants a license. Even those who don't take home a prize can list their contest participation on their resumes, and sponsoring companies sometimes recruit from among the contestants.

Martin and Olsson collectively won $5,000 in prize money and received all-expenses paid tickets to DAC. While each has plans for his half of the prize, including paying off a car loan and buying hiking equipment, they said they knew what they'd do if they had lost.

"If we didn't place well, we would have tried again next year," Martin offered. "Engineering is not a discipline where you can give up after your first failure. You learn from it and move on."

Still, the DAC recognition is not the first honor the students have won. Martin is a National Science Foundation fellowship winner who earned a BSEE from the University of Florida. He's working toward a PhD with a thesis on remote chemical sensors for heavy-metal detection in rain.

Martin said that he has always enjoyed science and math and that he was encouraged to pursue engineering by his father, a pilot and teacher.

Olsson received his BSEE from West Virginia University in 1999 and his master's from the University of Michigan in December. He is working toward his PhD with a thesis on active neural recording probes for neural prosthetic devices, such as cochlear implants. He is studying under a National Institutes of Health grant.

Olsson said he became interested in engineering after learning that it would allow him to apply the calculus he'd learned in high school.

Agere's Ackland said the benefits of the contest go beyond exposing engineering students to the tools and methods of the IC design industry. When times are good, he said, the contest is a means for channeling back into the design community funds raised from professional societies and corporate sponsors.

Although some designs might draw interest from companies, the idea is for design companies to get a look at the design talent in the universities. "It's a potential hiring opportunity [for the design companies] down the road," Ackland said.

A strong proponent of student design contests, Michigan's Brown has participated in them since he was a graduate student at University of Utah in the 1980s. He was responsible for organizing a design contest at the University of Michigan, where he developed the VLSI program via programmatic changes, curricular development, extracurricular activities and infrastructure initiatives.

Brown believes all the contestants deserve recognition. "These students work as hard as the students on the sports teams, but their work and successes are not that well-known," he said.

That may change soon for Martin, who said he may try to fabricate his device this summer if he can obtain a grant to do so.