SWE Extreme Gingerbread Competition a Success

The Brown University Society for Women Engineers held its sixth annual “Extreme Gingerbread House Competition” on Friday, November 30. Thirteen teams of three to five students participated. The designs ranged from the traditional to the modern, and included a pyramid-shaped house and several circular/stadium-shaped houses.

Once again this year, the teams were challenged to build earthquake resistant gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, icing, candy canes, pretzels, gummy bears and other supplied materials in a one-hour time period. Houses were required to be hollow with a maximum wall thickness of one inch, and had to exceed 6” x 6” x6”. The houses were judged both for aesthetics, and amount of time without breaking on a shake table. Celebrity faculty judges included Dean Larry Larson, Professor Barrett Hazeltine, and Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the Faculty Janet Blume.

For the second consecutive year, the Band (David Emanuel ’13, Yukun Gao ’13, Rebecca Reitz ’13, Ian Brownstein ’13, Hannah Riskin-Jones ’13) won the competition.

Team Erica Kahn (Jill Pandiscio ’14, Amanda Doodlesack ’14, Allison Hojsak ’14, Julia Carr ’14, Alison Gale ’14) took second place.

Team MatLab (Daniel Gregg ’15, Pawel Golyski ’15, Daniel Audette ’15, Victoria Lee ’15, Samuel Friedman ’15) finished third.

All three teams received gift certificates to local restaurants for their efforts.

For a full photo gallery of the event, please go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brownengin/sets/72157632166921495/