On September 2-3, 2016, about 70 students gathered at the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) for the Sustainability Design-a-Thon sponsored by Engineers for a Sustainable World, Autodesk, GTMI and GT's Serve-Learn-Sustain. On the first evening, students were treated to dinner while learning about Autodesk Fusion 360. Next was a workshop on sustainable design thinking. Finally, students were given a prompt for beginning the design competition.

Students were asked to design a more sustainable breakfast product that helps support a better product lifecycle. They had 24 hours and had to build the design in Fusion360.

Teams worked throughout the day on Saturday getting ready for presentations and judging at 6 p.m. Judges had to pick three winners from all of the stellar work done by students.

And…the winners were:

First Place - The Hawdaire Stove, a universal kitchen attachment for pellet stoves. Designed by Atticus Huberts, Royal Dcunha and Varun Nambiar, the Hawdaire Stove directs heat from a pellet stove through a stove-like appliance that can be used for cooking.

Second Place - Tom's Cooking Pot, a utensil for outdoor cooking with propane or a wood fire. Students Matthew Brasselle and Trevor Brasselle designed the pot to be multifunctional, have efficient heat transfer, be compact and able to operate with one hand.

Third Place - Auto Breakfast, an appliance that can make pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, tea, smoothies and more, all in a coffee maker-sized, eco-sustainable device. Students Joel Cheng, Adam Shah and Ayush Agrawal designed it to be multifunctional and high tech, with wifi features and the ability to program it with a smart phone or laptop.

According to Jeff Smith of Autodesk, "GTMI has been a wonderful partner with Autodesk. This was our third event working with GTMI." He added, "Holding these competitions are a great way to get students to think fast and act on their designs."