Texas A&M at Qatar hosts student engineering innovation

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The Peninsula

Doha: Students from Texas A&M University at Qatar and other Qatar Foundation partner universities recently spent 48 hours designing, building and presenting ideas and technologies of benefit to the world during Invent for the Planet 2022, an international engineering innovation competition.

Organised and hosted by Texas A&M University's main campus in College Station, Texas (USA), Invent for the Planet asked students from 28 participating universities around the world to tackle the most challenging issues facing the world today in just 48 hours. At each location, teams were formed based on a shared interest in one of the available need statements. 

Over the following two days, the teams researched their topic, collaborated with mentors, came up with a plan and built a simple prototype. Each team then presented its product to a panel of judges.

First place in the local contest and a $1,000 prize went to the team, The Bad Apple, consisting of Seham Al Baker, Soha Mousa, Waad Ismail, Mohamed Fattouh, Ryan Mansour and Mohammad Nafees. Their project, the Good Apple application, addresses food waste in Qatar. The team was one of the top six finalists internationally and will travel to Texas A&M's main campus for a final pitch to be held from April 5 to 7. The winners will be named global champion of Invent for the Planet 2022. 

Al Baker, a Class of 2022 mechanical engineering student, said:“Through this experience. we learned that to succeed you must have effective communication with your team, have the ability to present your idea clearly to an audience, and most importantly be confident in yourselves. I would like to thank my professors for constantly reminding us of the importance of the engineering design process. I'd also like to thank my amazing team members for each and every one of their efforts, which contributed to us securing first place in the local competition and top 5 globally.”

Thirty-four students from Education City, including students from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Georgetown University in Qatar and Hamad Bin Khalifa University —participated in the Qatar contest, which was organised and hosted by Texas A&M at Qatar's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).
Second place and a $750 prize went to the Team Aquatex: Haseeb Bajwa, Hayyam Iqbal, Faisal Mashhadi, Ashhadul Islam, Begali Aslonov and Deep Chandra. They worked on the theme of digitalization in seafood production and proposed a cost-effective managerial system for small-scale fish farming.

Third place and a $500 prize went to Team Purifiers: Mohammed Ishaq Ansari, Gani Raissov, Antonios Sichanis, Nathan Braganza, Rehaan Hussein and Sidrah Aslam. Their project aims to improve indoor air quality in built environments through a cost-effective device that purifies indoor air with automated sediment filtration.

During the competition, the student teams were mentored by experts from the TASMU Innovation Laboratory, part of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, as well as Texas A&M at Qatar's own engineering, innovation, entrepreneurship and STEM experts. 

MENAFN14032022000063011010ID1103841660