We are proud to announce the winner of the 2009 Hoffmann + Krippner Award for Excellence in Student Engineering:

Project: PhonePoint Pen
Student: Sandip Agrawal
University: Duke
Year: Senior

The "PhonePoint Pen", a student produced project by Duke University senior, Sandip Agrawal was selected as the winner of H+K’s first annual Award of Excellence in Student Engineering Scholarship.

The $2500 scholarship recognizes student engineering projects in the field of human-machine interfaces (HMI) applications and input devices.

H+K will present Agrawal and his winning entry at a 4:15pm press conference at the 2009 Sensors Expo & Conference on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center (in the Application Showcase Theater) at 5555 N. River Rd., Rosemont, IL 60018.

Agrawal’s Phonepoint Pen concept would allow a phone user to note small pieces of information, quickly, and ubiquitously. He proposes that the Phonepoint Pen would utilize the built – in accelerometer which is standard in most current mobile phones to recognize human writing. By holding the phone in a pen like fashion, the user should be able to write short notes or even draw diagrams in the air based on hand gestures, the message would then be sent to the user’s email address for future reference.

The current development of this technology, as demonstrated by Agrawal in his project paper, is very promising and should allow for a short-term market entry.

"We are always committed to supporting engineering students and this is a great way to publicly showcase some of the finest new ideas in HMI engineering," said Ralf Krippner, CEO of the H+K Group Germany.

Guido Woska, president of the US branch adds, "We recognize the creativity and hard work of engineering students and want to reward them."

HMI professionals, Woska, John Zegers, director of Georgia Center of Innovation for Manufacturing, and John Doyle, assistant professor of computer science at Indiana University (Southeast) judged the scholarship applicants and selected the 2009 recipient.

For additional information visit H+K’s booth, #415 on Monday, June 8 through Wednesday June 10. For interview opportunities with Guido Woska, president and Sandip Agrawal, PhonePoint Pen creator or for high resolution photos contact Justin Cooper, PR & media coordinator at 678-519-2218 ext 304 (office) or 404-803-3006 (cell)