Georgia Tech placed first among seven university teams at the national, college-level event held at Lake Lanier's Van Pugh Park in Flowery Branch. Ga. The race was the final test for the sailboards that were crafted by the teams during the past eight months. It accounted for 20 percent of the total points needed to win Energy Challenge.

Overall scoring for the event was based on best paper sailboard performance during a timed race, written reports, gross weight, material composition, tensile energy absorption, stiffness and novelty of design.

Miami University (Ohio) took second and $10,000 and the University of Maine finished third and collected $5,000.

Ga. Tech's champions included Gonzalo Stabile, Philip Timm and Yianni Ellis.

"Our emphasis was to design a sailboard that was 100-percent recyclable and make it as environmentally sound as we could," said Stabile, who is originally from Argentina. "We went for simplicity and tried to minimize the use of energy in production. At first we thought our sailboard might struggle when we saw what other teams had built, but we were glad it sailed just fine."

Energy Challenge, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Institute of Paper Science and Technology, Hercules, Inc. and WindSense, allows engineering students to work with energy efficiency and waste minimization concepts that have real applications in the pulp and paper industry.

The teams designed the sailboards exclusively from paper products, including corrugated paperboard or linerboard. Commonly used paper chemicals were allowed in the finishing and bonding of the board.

Each of the schools received a $2,000 "start up" grant to assist with the funding of their project. From there, it was up to them to fashion the sailboard.

The purpose of Energy Challenge was to encourage innovation, increase interest in science and engineering and promote awareness of energy efficiency, manufacturing design, recycling, waste minimization and pulp and paper industrial processes.

The competition supports DOE's Agenda 2020 - a program to enhance the economic competitiveness of the U.S. forest products industry and to help the pulp and paper industry reach the vision of more energy efficient manufacturing processes in the year 2020.

Editor's Note: Additional information about the contest can be found on the Energy Challenge Web site at http://www.ipst.edu/energy_challenge