Dubai, UAE, 4 February, 2015: After the success of the inaugural Future Generation competition, the Informa Energy Group will once again be running the contest in March which was created to highlight the potential of undergraduate engineering students currently studying in the UAE.
The challenge for each participant is to design and develop an innovative solution for energy efficiency, energy conservation or alternative energy and present their ideas during Middle East Electricity and Solar Middle East, which take place from 2-4 March 2015 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. For the inaugural edition of the competition, visitors voted for the project they thought was the most innovative and viable. This year there will be two awards on offer, a people's choice award which follows the same system as last year, and a new judge's award, decided by a panel of three industry experts who will review all of the entries to ultimately determine their winning project.
The winners of last year's award were Zulfa A Rasheed, Amna Abdulla and Muna Dahir Ali from Ajman University of Science & Technology/Fujairah for their 'Wind Powered Water Lifting System' project, a renewable energy conversion system transforming wind energy to mechanical energy
Another standout project from last year's competition came from Emirati sisters Anood Al Hamadi and Aisha Al Hamadi from the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) Ruwais. The pair are the first Emirati female engineers to come from the UAE's Al Gharbia western region.
There is certainly no shortage of innovation for the next edition of the awards with a number of projects having already been submitted. One of the submissions by RIT-Dubai University uses existing technology to create a new solution. Using solar power for the energy source, thermo-electric coolers are used to generate a cooling effect which can bring down the temperature inside a parked car, which will be especially effective during the summer months. For the people's choice award, visitors will have a unique opportunity to see the designs which will be on display at the Future Generation stand located in Sheikh Maktoum Hall, speak to students about their ideas and vote for their favourite. The projects with the maximum number of visitor votes and the one selected by the panel of judges will be presented with a Middle East Electricity Award on Wednesday 4 March at 2:00pm in the Sheikh Maktoum Conference Hall.
Commenting on the success of the first competition, Anita Mathews, Director of Informa Energy Group, said: "The launch of Future Generation, a student competition designed to encourage young minds, was a great success. The projects on display last year were extremely creative, and it was really encouraging to see so many innovative ideas coming out of the UAE's higher education sector. We believe that young minds are our future leaders and nurturing these exceptional minds is our gift for tomorrow. This is certainly something we have built on for the 2015 edition of the event."
