Winners honoured as Green Technology contest ends at QU

Qatar University (QU) witnessed the closing ceremony of the first edition of the Green Technology Competition 2021, organised by the College of Engineering (CENG), and in co-ordination with the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) and the student branch of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) at QU.
The competition launched in the first semester of the current academic year 2021-2022, aimed to engage secondary school students to enhance their technical and basic programming skills through designing a solar energy tracker and exploring the aspects of engineering design.
There were 50 students participating from 10 different teams of Qatari independent schools. The closing ceremony was preceded by specialised workshops to aid them in their engineering design process, which included basic workshops in Arduino microcontroller, and another in 3D-printing.
At the closing ceremony, the competing teams presented their solar tracker models to the competition jury for the purpose of evaluating the models based on pre-defined criteria, such as design complexity, system response time, creativity and originality of the design, and explanation of the difficulties that the teams face and how they were mitigated.
The jury consisted of four members affiliated with the CENG, including Prof Rashid A al-Ammari (faculty member, Department of Electrical Engineering and former dean), Prof Nader M Meskin (faculty member, Department of EE), engineer Abdulrahman H Abunada (R&D engineer, Barzan Holdings), and engineer Yahya M Alhomsi (general manager and co-founder of Voltaat).
At the end of the ceremony, in the presence of Prof Abdelmagid Hamouda, associate dean for Academic Affairs at CENG, the top three winners of the competition were announced and honoured. Jassim bin Hamad Secondary School ranked first, followed by Abdullah bin Ali al-Misnad Secondary School in second place, and third place went to Al Wakra Secondary School.
Prof Hamouda described the competition as proof that the Qatari schools’ system is following latest international standards and developments, and said the impacts of this advancement were reflected in the presented models. Dr Mohamed A al-Hitmi (head, Department of EE) and Prof Nizar Zorba (faculty member, Department of EE and adviser for the student branch of IEEE) lauded the participants.
The Department of EE at QU has won several international awards, and the programme is academically accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), it was pointed out.
Engineer Mohamed Murtaza, head of Student Branch of IEEE at QU said: “The students showed great motivation in their presentations, and their hard work was evident through the submitted designs and models. Although the main theme of the design was unified, each school created its own unique design. This confirms to us the success of the competition in conveying a glimpse of what engineering design really is to the participating students.”
Engineer Tamim M al-Mulla, vice-president of the Student Branch of IEEE at QU, announced more activities will be held in the future with new and diverse topics to unleash the capabilities of the participating students, but with the same goals as in the current version of the competition.