Meet Paige Seibert
Paige Seibert is a standout student whose journey through ASABE competitions exemplifies how student involvement can accelerate both academic and professional growth. Over the past three years, Paige has distinguished herself as a multiple competition winner and participated in ASABE's Annual International Meeting (AIM), presenting research on anaerobic digester efficiency and engaging with the broader agricultural engineering community.
Her experiences offer valuable insights for students considering how competition participation can enhance their engineering education and career preparation.
How have the ASABE competitions you competed in helped you in the real world?
The Gunlogson competition was helpful for practice making a real-world engineering pitch, including 3-D renderings, a budget, working within constraints and criteria, etc. All competitions are helpful for practicing working with a diverse team. The Bioprocessing competition was extra helpful for me because I was an undergraduate, but got the opportunity to work directly with graduate students for the competition. I feel like seeing how graduate students tackled this competition quickly elevated my presentation, critical thinking, and writing skills.
Was this your first time attending AIM? Why or why not would you recommend that other students attend?
My first time attending AIM was in 2022 in Omaha. At this AIM, I competed in the Bioprocessing Startup competition. My group won first place for our idea RuEFORM, which was a ruminant feed additive designed to reduce enteric methane emissions. I recommend that students attend AIM for several reasons. The competitions were definitely great resume-builders and experiences, but students should attend regardless of whether they are competing or not. I enjoyed going to relevant poster sessions and oral presentations. This helped me connect with individuals with similar interests.
At the 2024 AIM, I presented a poster titled "Understanding the Relationship Between Microbial Communities and Anaerobic Digester Efficiency on Swine Farms." This was a good opportunity to practice communicating my research to both experts and people who knew nothing about digesters. Lastly, I would recommend attending the International Student Branch activities while at AIM. These are fun, low-stress events designed for undergraduates to network with each other. These experiences helped me learn more about ASABE at other schools and gave me ideas for my own chapter.
I also won the Bioprocessing competition in 2023 for a product called Adsorbeads, which was biochar-doped hydrogels designed to remove pollutants from water. In 2024, I got third place in the Gunlogson design competition, for my senior design project "Efficient Sea Lettuce Cultivation with Oyster Polyculture."
Why would you recommend other students participate in ASABE student competitions?
ASABE competitions have a low barrier to entry, which is unusual for engineering competitions. In particular, the Bioprocessing Startup doesn't require any funding, and can be as small or large of a commitment as you make it. Gunlogson and AGCO are also great because everyone completes a senior design project anyway. Just change the formatting a bit to make it fit ASABE's standards, and you can submit to the competition without much extra work!