BURBANK, Calif., June 13 -- Cenk Acar, a PhD student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department's MicroSystems Lab at the University of California, Irvine, is the first place winner of the 3-D MEMS Design Challenge, sponsored by MEMGen Corp. Acar designed a distributed-mass micromachined gyroscope, which can be used for a wide variety of aerospace, military, automotive and consumer electronics applications. Acar will receive $10,000 cash, a prototype of the design and a SolidWorks Office 2003 3-D CAD package. Jason Clark, a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley's Applied Science and Technology program, was the second-place winner, for a floating electromechanical systems (FLEMS) prototype design. Applications include highly sensitive accelerometers, high-Q filters and inertial navigation systems for aerospace and multistable systems. Said Emre Alper and Tayfun Akin, PhD won third place for a tactical-grade symmetrical and decoupled micro-gyroscope that can be used for commercial and military applications. Alper is a research assistant in Middle East Technical University's (Ankara, Turkey) Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and Akin is an associate professor at the university. Three honorable mentions were also given for designs of a 3-D microconvective heat sink, MEMS thermometer and scanning mass spectrometer. MEMGen manufactures microdevices and microsystems and developed EFAB technology. For more information, visit: www.memgen.com