Campus Notes

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BITS, Pilani - Dubai joined its cousins in Goa and Pilani in organising a National Level Inter-College Technology Festival - ‘ENGINuity 2009’ on February 25th and 26th of this year. The Fest was the brainchild of three students, Abhinav Gupta (IVth Year), Piyush Singh, and Rohan Trikha (both IIIrd Year). It was also supported through the efforts of Deans, Dr. G. Vijaya and Dr. Tanmay Panda.

The word ‘ENGINuity’ is a play on ‘An Engineer’s Ingenuity’, an apt one considering the level of technical expertise and engineering acumen that is demanded of the participants (and which they displayed with much aplomb).  Participants came from seven of the very best Universities of the U.A.E. Preparations for the event began well in advance.  An enthusiastic team of over 40 volunteers got down to getting everything right planned to the very last detail.
The events comprising ENGINuity were:

• The Computer Gaming competition emerged to be a popular one. The participants competed in COUNTER STRIKE 1.6 (shooting game), FIFA 09(a soccer game) and Defence of the Ancients (DotA) (a war craft game).
• The Computer Programming Competition challenged the participants to prove their programming skills in one of three programming languages.
• “Jargon”, the tech-themed quiz tested the students’ knowledge on various science and technology topics.
• The Bridge Building competition was a unique designing competition where the students were supposed to design a self supported bridge capable of withstanding static load on the pathway, using only drinking straws and tape. The competition was an excellent example of being creative with minimum resources which is the need of the world today.
• The On the spot model making gave a simple task of making two paper planes using a single sheet of paper for each plane but the challenge was to make one of them travel the maximum distance and the other to stay airborne for the maximum amount of time. This event in fact drew the maximum participation.

The entire event got off to quite a spectacular beginning with the Inauguration ceremony. The Chief Guest was the Secretary of the IEEE – UAE branch, Mr. Eesa Bastaki who committed the wholehearted support of his organisation behind ENGINuity so that it would become a shining example for other universities to follow. The next two days were a gala of competitions, which provided a rare opportunity for students from the various universities to interact with one another and get involved in the side attractions, such as the food and game stalls that had been put up all over Campus.

The events themselves were quite keenly contested but BPD had that extra edge in majority of the events to finish as the Best Overall College, ending up as winners in the maximum number of events.

The Fest concluded with the Prize Distribution Ceremony where the Winners and Runners-Up in each event got prizes sponsored by Siemens, Bosch, Razer, Radio 105.4 and IEEE.  It brought a successful end to the first edition of this (hopefully) annual competition.