UTPA students won 1st place at the 2008 IEEE Region 5 Robotics Competition held April 19 in Kansas City. UTPA's autonomous "Escorpion" robot competed with 30 other university teams from across the central US, on a course including weight recognition, navigation, color recognition, and precision object placement. Congratulations to the members of the winning team: Marcelo Resendez, Viridiana Martinez, and Marcos Ochoa. UTPA's "Ironbot" robot, built by Paul Martinez, Jose Sanchez, and Alex Rodriguez also made it into the final round of competition.

This is the second year in a row that UTPA has taken first place in Robotics.


Viridiana Martinez, Marcos Ochoa, Marcelo Resendez

In the Student Paper Competition, UTPA's Jubail Caballero won Third Place for his paper "RFID Proximity Card System" at Region 5 after previously winning local and area level competitions.