A team of three ISU students placed third overall in the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society’s international design competition last week, becoming one of the few U.S. teams ever to place in the event.

The team of Melanie Davis, senior in computer science; Douglas Houghton, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering; and Shahzaib Younis, senior in pre-computer science, also received the Microsoft Software Engineering Award.

“We knew we could do a lot together if we worked throughout the competition,” Younis said.

The team, which is scattered across the country because of internships, has been communicating through e-mail.

The team members arrived in Washington and while other teams were relaxing, they were hard at work on last-minute adjustments to their presentation, Younis said.

“Each team did their own thing,” Younis said.

The press and the public were allowed to watch informal presentations and ask questions, Younis said.

Also, 30-minute formal presentations were given to the judges. These included 20-minute presentations on the teams’ ideas and 10 minutes for questions from the judges, Younis said.

“We were just there to sell our idea at that point,” Younis said.

The group’s submission, called “Spatial Cue,” is a wearable, location-based alert system that could leave messages in cyberspace and assist rescue workers by use of a Global Positioning System and a personal digital assistant.

Poland’s Poznan University of Technology, won first place; Romania’s Poltehnica University of Bucharest, took second place.

The ISU team received $9,000 in prize money, Younis said.