Students Imagine Crazy Tech Ideas at Minya's Second Innovation Day in Egypt
Despite a train conductor strike that paralyzed Egypt’s railways
in mid-April, the engineering Faculty at Minya University pushed
ahead with the second Innovation Day competition and exhibition on
April 9th. Bringing students to Minya from all around Egypt, the
two day event hosted 50 graduation projects that competed in
building technical and engineering solutions to some of Egypt's
most pressing problems.
Although some competitors from Al Azhar and Alexandria Universities
couldn’t attend due to the strike, all of the projects competed in
three exhibitions: an exhibition for university students, a “Crazy
Idea” exhibition for high school students, and a “Line Followers”
exhibition for robotics, under the patronage and support of the
Egyptian Engineers Syndicate.
Entrepreneurs and experts from Cairo, including Hani Gamal,
software development consultant at Planet
360, Mohamad Youssef, founder of VLSI Egypt, Amr Abdel Rahman,
executive director of MIMV and Ahmed Rabih, executive director
of Mobipreneur, offered their support and
mentorship.
During mentorship sessions, Youssef emphasized the importance of
specialization and finding your niche, while noting the
difficulties for technical startups in finding talented employees
and engineers. Gamal advised students not to make their studies a
hurdle to their creativity, adding a dose of reality: “These
graduation projects are different from establishing a commercial
startup capable of achieving sustainability and profitability.”
The jury included university faculty members in the electrical,
information technology, mechatronics, mechanics, automotive,
computer engineering, and communication departments.
The winning projects for the university student competition are:
- First place in Computer Engineering: "Smart Elevator" uses a camera to recognize the faces of waiting individuals and then brings a specific elevator to the right type of user (teacher, student, etc.) to make the process more efficient.
- First place in Information Technology: “Smart School” controls the entry and exit of students from the school, as their individual identity cards trigger cameras to follow students inside the school.
- First place in Mechanics: “Packing machine” packs grain using electromagnetic energy instead of kinetic energy.
- First place in the Electrical category: “Shams Dual Tracker” is a solar panel that allows users to save money on current energy costs.
- First place in Mechatronics: “Infinite Energy” attempts to exploit the earth's magnetic field to generate an eco-friendly source of electrical power.
The Governor of Minya attended the closing ceremony and awarded
10,000 Egyptian pounds (around US $2000), which was divided equally
among the winning teams.
The winners of the “Crazy Idea” competition for high
schools students are:
- “Nour”, created by Nouran Mohamed and Abdallah Issam, an all-Arabic operating system for a computer.
- Abdel Rahman Salama designed a garbage bin that automatically tells you when it’s full.
- A solar cells capacity modifier, by Nada Youssef, that would maximize the amount of solar power transformed into electricity.
Taking Control of Their Future
Despite the enthusiasm of students and participants throughout the
event, and the many patriotic anthems related to the Egyptian
revolution, students expressed their dismay over the challenges
they face finding work upon graduation. On top of that, they feel
unprepared for the jobs that are available. But they seemed to be
determined to resist this sad reality and innovate
anyway.
As a sign of their resistance, students from the automotive
engineering department of the IEEE Minya University expressed their
intentions to build a one-seat racecar to compete in the Formula Student
Competition next year, in collaboration with the Helwan University students that competed in 2010.