Engineering Festivals (ASME E-Fests) program kicked off in February with ASME E-Fest Asia Pacific in India—a three-day celebration of engineering that incorporated a variety of informative panel sessions and workshops, entertainment, and several exciting student competitions including the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge (HPVC), the Student Design Competition (SDC), the Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D Challenge, and the Old Guard Oral Presentation and Technical Poster Competitions.
The event, which was held from February 1 to 3 at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in Vellore, India, was also the biggest E-Fest so far in the program’s three-year history. Nearly 1,300 students, faculty, and volunteers from more than 70 universities took part in the event.
ASME E-Fest Asia Pacific officially opened with a lamp-lighting ceremony featuring senior leaders from VIT including the Honorable Vice Chancellor G. Viswanathan, Vice President Sekar Viswanathan, and Vice Chancellor Anand A. Samuel. Among the representatives from ASME at the ceremony were Callie Tourigny, ASME’s senior vice president of Student and Early Career Engagement, and John Hasselmann, ASME’s managing director for Global Public Affairs.
Addressing the aspiring engineers in the audience during her remarks at the lamp lighting session, Callie Tourigny pointed out that ASME could be a valuable resource for them as they embarked upon their careers. “Every single one of you have an incredible opportunity now and ahead to make a difference in the world,” she said. “As a professional society, ASME is pleased to expand our mission here as India’s economy continues to grow. ASME’s mission is to promote and advance
engineering knowledge to improve the quality of life. We are committed to ensuring that all of you have the tools and experience you need to solve the complex challenges that face our world.”
The festival also encompassed a number of career development sessions and workshops, including an all-day workshop on biologically inspired design led by Prashant Dhawan and Seema Anand, co-founders of Bio-mimicry Network India; a 3-D printing workshop, an Engineering for Change workshop, and a session, “The Path Forward at ASME.”
The team from the E-Fest’s host school, VIT, took first place overall—and the $1,000 top prize—at the
HPVC in India. The team also placed second in the endurance event, third in the men’s and women’s speed races. Placing second overall at the HPVC was the team from NMIMS Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering. Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology took third place overall.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay took top honors at the
Student Design Competition at E-Fest Asia Pacific. For this year’s competition, “The Pick-and-Place Race,” students were challenged to design and construct remote-controlled devices that could quickly collect a variety of balls of different sizes from their stands and place them in a collection area without causing the balls to hit the ground. The team from VIT was the runner-up at the competition, while a team of students from Hong Kong Polytechnic University won the third prize.
Other prize winners at E-Fest Asia Pacific included the team from Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology Management and Gramothan, which placed first in the Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D (IAM3D) Challenge; Satish Ranjan Pradhan from National Institute of Technology Rourkela, who placed first in the Old Guard Oral Presentation Competition; and Mohammed Shoaib from the Anurag Group of Institutions, who took top honors in the Old Guard Technical Poster Competition.
E-Fest Asia Pacific, which also featured two lively rock concerts that enthralled the students attending, was an “an incredible experience,” according to Vineet Vashi, one of the event’s student organizers. “It was a dream to host the E-Fest at VIT,” said Vashi, who along with fellow students Pujan Parvadia and Manas Chavan, led a team of 150 students who coordinated the festival.
The Society will present two more E-Fests during the next two months. The first,
E-Fest West, will take place from March 15 to 17 at the Fairplex in Pomona, CA. Discounted early registration is available through March 15 for the other festival to be held this spring, E-Fest North, which will take place from April 5 to 7 at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.
In other related news, ASME is presenting its first ASME EFx event in the United States next month. EFx events are smaller-scale versions of E-Fests that can be easily staged by local colleges and universities. The first EFx in the United States, EFx NYU: MakerHack, will be offered on March 9 and 10 at NYU Tandon MakerSpace in Brooklyn, NY.
To learn more or to register for EFx NYU visit
efxnyu.asme.org.
Register for
E-Fest West or
E-Fest North.