UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An undergraduate team of Penn State engineering students earned first place in the Airport Management and Planning Challenge at the University Design Competition for Addressing Airport Needs. The competition, hosted by the Transportation Research Board’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP), “encourages students to design innovative and practical solutions to challenges at airports,” according to the ACRP’s ACRP's news release.
Composed of students from a spring 2025 “ENGR 408: Leadership Principles” course, the Penn State team won the competition with the project “Expanda-bin,” an expandable Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security bin designed to reduce passenger wait times by improving throughput at airport checkpoints. As the first-place winners, the team received $3,000 and the opportunity to present its proposal at the American Association of Airport Executives/Airport Consultants Council Symposium March 4-6 in Indianapolis.
“The ACRP design competition provides ‘ENGR 408’ students with an opportunity to apply the leadership principles explored through course content to solve real-world problems,” said Abbie Canale, assistant teaching professor in the School of Engineering Design and Innovation (SEDI) and one of the instructors for “ENGR 408,” which is a course requirement for the engineering leadership development (ELD) minor.
To meet the challenge of maximizing airport capacity, the team researched airport congestion and interviewed industry professionals, ultimately identifying TSA passenger processing as a key constraint to airport capacity.
“The idea for Expanda-bin came from the fact that all airports have a TSA bottleneck in the sense that all passengers must pass through the security checkpoint,” said team member Ishan Agrahar, a senior majoring in computer science, statistics and philosophy. “Any idea that would save individual passengers even seconds of time would aggregate into large amounts of time saved for airports and allow higher passenger flow throughout airports. Our team did a deep dive into all aspects of the TSA security line and found that there were multiple innovations in the architecture and layout, but the TSA bins remain increasingly outdated.”
In addition to Agrahar, the team members included mechanical engineering majors Peyton Aversa, Evan Muller and Jacob Reehorst, as well as Adon Yovkochov, who recently graduated with a degree in computer science. Meg Handley, associate director of ELD and associate teaching professor in SEDI, co-advised the team with Canale, and Penn State alumnus Max Moran of Tesla provided mentorship.
“Our team worked really well together because everyone brought different strengths to the table,” Aversa said. “By leaning into those strengths and collaborating closely, we were able to build on each other’s ideas and develop a stronger solution.”
Penn State teams from “ENGR 408” classes have received recognition in several of the previous years’ competitions, including 2024, 2023 and 2022.
“Instructors recommend topperforming teams submit their projects to the national competition, and we have been thrilled to celebrate several teams that have earned national recognition in recent years,” Canale said. “This recognition reflects student dedication, the incredible support of our ELD alumni mentors, and the strength of our ongoing partnership with the ACRP. This year’s winning team is an excellent example of how intentional leadership practice, collaborative teaming, access to ACRP and Learning Factory resources, and supportive alumni coaching can empower students to develop meaningful and innovative solutions in 10 short weeks.”