Congratulations to all of this year's Student Merit Award participants and winners! Learn more about the Student Merit Awards and see previous years' winners here.

CENTRAL DISTRICT

Congratulations to all of this year's Student Merit Award participants and winners! 2012 saw an impressive turnout of work from our Student Chapters and members.

Learn more about the Student Merit Awards and see previous year's winners here.

MIDEAST DISTRICT

2011 SMA | Leo Chen, IDSA | University of Houston

When 14-year-old Leo Chen began dissecting computers in his native Taiwan, he had only a faint idea of what design was. His Chinese upbringing did predispose him to understanding harmony. With that deep appreciation of how things flow together, he has emerged from the University of Houston (UH) as a certified problem solver.

2011 SMA | John Traub, IDSA | University of Notre Dame

2011 SMA | Trevis Kurz, IDSA | The Ohio State University

2011 SMA | David Fustino, IDSA | Wentworth Institute of Technology

Like any designer, David Fustino has learned to solve problems on the fly, work within a unit, express his individual style and persevere through the worst situations. The difference between him and the rest of us: he began learning those skills on a soccer pitch.

Janna Budge, IDSA | New Deal Design

Student Merit Award: 2011

Nick Poteracki from Lake Zurich, Ill., won first place in the Eye for Why, a Dyson international design competition, for his water bottle filtration system. Poteracki's Drop Portable Water Filtration Unit replaces the traditional water bottle with one that has filters near the spout.

Mark Palmer, a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology’s industrial design program won the Industrial Designers Society of America’s (IDSA) National Student Merit Award at its northeast district conference in spring 2006. Palmer beat out design students from nine other universities in the northeast area of the country. RIT students have won the award two of the three years since the award’s inception.