Imagine nearly 300 rival engineering students, seven competitions, 18 planet-seeking robots and a disco ball. That was the scene at the 12th annual University of Toronto Engineering Kompetition (UTEK).
On January 25, U of T undergraduates gathered to compete in engineering design, consulting, programming and parliamentary debate. Winners qualified to represent U of T at the Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) and potentially the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC).
“This year’s participation was a record high,” said Kenny Wong (ChemE 1T5), Co-Director of the 2014 UTEK Event. “Each year we see more and more students from across the Faculty wanting to compete.”
Knowing this, Wong and fellow Co-Director Suhaib Ahmed (ECE 1T5) opened up more student spots for 2014. Their team also invited over 50 professors, staff and alumni to judge the competitions, along with representatives from event sponsors like Altera, AMEC and Rocscience.
With tight deadlines and a lot of pressure, UTEK gave students the opportunity to develop and practice critical teamwork, design and communication skills that are essential for professional engineers.
“We worked with industry leaders to come up with real-world problems,” said Ahmed. “This gave participants an organic taste of engineering and a chance to network with professionals. We owe a special thanks to the Engineering Alumni Association for their invaluable support and our judges for their time and effort.”
In the Altera Senior Design Competition, students had to use Lego Mindstorms to build autonomous robots that simulated a space ship leaving the International Space Station. The robot had to navigate through an asteroid belt to one of three planets (made of disco balls and pomelos) after reading an encoded binary message.
UTEK also included a new Mobile Applications Design competition this year, where students had to create smartphone apps in less than seven hours. Competitors raced against the clock to design apps that connected to a car’s on-board computer and got real-time data like mileage and fuel in the tank.
“I gained a valuable experience participating at UTEK. Not only was it fun, but I learned new skills that I couldn’t have learned in the classroom,” said Nicholas Valenton (CivE 1T5). “This is definitely something I want to do next year.”
If you are interested in volunteering as a judge at similar events in the future, please contact Sonia De Buglio, Director of Alumni Relations and Giving.
