The College of Engineering’s annual Engineering Open House, or EOH, will begin Friday and continue into Saturday. This student-led event holds exhibits in all of the engineering buildings, highlighting projects that University students have been working on all year long.

Gavin Rehkemper, director of EOH and senior in Engineering, said he’s not quite sure how long he’s spent putting the event together.

“We’ve got 17 committee members who have been working around the clock,” he said. “Planning starts a year in advance.”

There are usually 200 exhibits put on by students each year, according to the EOH Web site. But Rehkemper said there will be a record number of exhibits this year, including the popular Jerry Sanders Robot Design Competition.

The competition allows colleges in the area to build robots and use them to compete against each other. Rehkemper said that the robot design competition will include helium balloons this year, adding to the robot war’s appeal.

New to EOH this time are the EOH Mobile and Live features. EOH Mobile was developed by State Farm Insurance and allows anyone interested to download an application to their smartphone at eoh.illinois.edu/mobile for access to information about the event and its exhibits. EOH Live enables people to watch what is going on at the open house via the Internet if they are not able to attend the event.

According to the EOH Web site, Deanne Bell, engineer and host of “Smash Lab” on the Discovery Channel, will visit the open house and give a presentation that evening about working with the next generation of scientists and engineers.

“This year we are really trying to reach out to different types of students,” said Perri Kofkin, director of internal marketing for EOH and senior in Engineering.

She added that since there are more exhibits than ever before, everyone will be able to find one they enjoy.

Kofkin said they are hoping that all of the hard work pays off and that students from all majors attend the event.

Brad Messersmith, sophomore in Engineering, worked on a few different displays for the event, and said he would love if people could come out and appreciate the effort put into it.

“I have to run the displays,” Messersmith said. “If nobody comes, then our efforts are worthless.”