October 11, 2013, by Graham Kendall

UNMC Mechanical Engineering Student returned with trophy from the IMechE EngNow 2013, Hong Kong

This post was contributed by Albert Tshai KY

---

IMechE “EngNow – The Future of Engineering is Now” is an inaugural cross regional IMechE event encompasses a collection of activities over 4 days, 14^th – 17^th September 2013, including a Design Competition for the Visually Impaired (DCVI), Asia Pacific Speak Out for Engineering competition (API SOfE) and an 360° Young Leadership Conference.

As an Affiliate member of the IMechE and South East Asia representative, Mr Alireza Parpaei (a 1^st year student from the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering and the chairperson of UNMC IMechE Student Chapter) competed with 12 contestants from all over Asia Pacific countries such as Hong Kong, Australia, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and China in the API SOfE competition. He was announced the runner-up after a shared winning spot of Hong Kong and Singapore.  Alireza had already gone through 3 rounds of this competition, from internal university heats to national level (where he was the national champion in Malaysia) and the South East Asia regional level in Thailand this past April (where he was also runner-up).

“I think it’s very amazing that IMechE organises such a comprehensive learning experience that students like myself desperately need. These are the things that we don’t get to do in our classrooms very regularly and very seriously. For me getting to present an engineering idea to a group of non-engineering audience and trying to breakdown the complex ideas to simple ones was a challenge that I think is very necessary for engineers and future engineers for that matter. This is the time that we should get involved in this sort of activities and learn as much as we can because we simply meet a lot of people there that we definitely won’t meet in our daily lives and we get to experience things that we don’t get to do them on a regular basis. Over the past one year I got to travel to Thailand and Hong Kong to take part in several rounds of this contest and I should admit, it has been the most exciting roller coaster of events for me. IMechE and other supporting organisations are defining the future and that future is right here in our classrooms and for that I think IMechE is one of the greatest organisations on the face of this planet”, said Alireza.

Speak Out for Engineering (SOfE) competition was an initiative of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, UK (IMechE) since 1964, with the aim to challenge young engineers’ communication skills  by giving an effective presentation to a group of audience who may know little about engineering.

Being among the top 3 contestants of this event, Alireza was awarded HKD1000 as a prize as well as certificates of participation and winning. For more information about EngNow 2013 head down to http://nearyou.imeche.org/near-you/north-east-asia/engnow

In the DCVI design competition, the UiTM design team with a prototype navigation device for the visually impaired called the NaviSense was announced Champion amongst 11 contesting teams from China, Hong Kong, India and Korea.

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn