Veni Vidi Vici - GEC 2016 Edition

By Abhinav Kongari

Organised by Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and The University of Makerere, Global Engineering Challenge is a week where marvellous ideas are produced and unforgettable memories are made. Recreating a 9-5 work place environment, the students are tasked to work on an engineering project in interdisciplinary groups. The entire Faculty of Engineering is divided into multiple hubs and each hub housed 7-8 groups, administered by a facilitator. The most unique thing is that none of the hubs has more than one group working on a single type of project and this maintains the individuality and innovativeness.

This year the main focus area was the region around Bambui in Cameroon. Project topics ranged from Water Supply to Transport to Hygiene. All of these categories were suggested by academics from University of Makerere in Uganda and were based on real life issues. Having given you all an idea of what GEC was, let me take a more personal perspective on the competition.

I’m a Mechanical Engineering student and in my group I had students from the Department of Material Science Engineering and Aerospace Engineering. When these 3 disciplines work in a team, projects usually involve construction of buildings or automobiles or something similar. Our project was to devise an Anti-Poaching system for the African forest elephants in the Bamenda-Banso highlands in Cameroon. We had to have a cheap and robust solution and individual tagging of animals was discouraged. Having never met each other, the first day was spent on either arguing or sitting in silence. But, gradually we grew accustomed to each other, realised our strengths and weaknesses and started working on the project. The whole week was similar to a healthy symbiotic relationship where I got the opportunity to teach my teammates something new and vice-versa. The final solution that we came up with involve the usage of solar-powered drones to monitor the forest.

Everything related to drones usually involves computer programming and we had no Computer Science students in our teams. What did we do? We researched and learned the way to program drones through Arduino circuits, determined the angles at which they’d have to fly and even the view of their lenses. Even though we had no prior experience of the essential skill, we designated parts of the job according to individual strengths and then shared the knowledge amongst each other. Eventually, we were able to incorporate the idea in our project and completed it in time. I believe this was the prime motive of GEC, i.e. to find out the solution through teamwork and using each other’s strengths to succeed.

The week had 3 major milestones:

1)     Completing the project

It took a lot of effort. We had many failures and there were times when we had to start over again but we persevered and never lost heart. Finally, at the end of the week we came up with a design that we were proud of. Throughout the project, we learnt from each other’s mistakes and supported one another to every extent. It was my first project working in an interdisciplinary team and it shall be etched in my memory forever.

2)     Interaction on Alumni Day

We had the privilege of having Mr. Barry Tan as our guest speaker on the Alumni Day. Being a recent Alumni and having worked in prestigious companies like SNC-lavalin, Mr. Tan shared amazing experiences and also gave some profound advice. Talking about his past mistakes and experiences, he suggested students to get involved in co-curricular activities, participate in competitions and do as many internships as possible. His best statement of the day - ‘Don’t do a Barry’

3)     Winning the competition

All the hard work and effort was finally rewarded when we were awarded the ‘best communicated solution’ for our project. It was a great experience and I’m glad GEC provided me with this opportunity.

Finally, all I’d say is that GEC was a mixed experience for everyone. Some people were lucky to have hardworking and passionate people in their group while others were not so lucky. I believe this was a reflection of how life usually is. Not everything is always according to our choices but as long we persevere, everything eventually falls in the right direction.

Bits and pieces about the first semester

By: Hui Choo, Tan - BEng Aerospace Engineering

I had been studying in Singapore before coming over to Sheffield for my BEng. To those who do not know where Singapore is, let me share some fun facts about her. Singapore is a tiny little country beside Malaysia. It is a country and also a city. There is only one season, which is summer all year round, with lowest temperature of about 24 degrees Celsius.

Why did I choose the University of Sheffield? I did some research before choosing the universities and I found out UoS is known as one of the best engineering universities in UK. In addition, a friend of mine who is studying in London suggested UoS as it is known for aerospace. Apart from these, UoS is ranked the top 100 of the 2014-2015 Times Higher Education World Universities Rankings’ Engineering and Technology.

University is about independent study although there are many hours of lectures, tutorial and laboratories. You will have to spend time doing revision to keep up with your work. It is all about time management so that you can play and study. UoS has many professors who are top in their engineering field, which is beneficial to the engineering students. Never be shy to consult them because they will be able to share their knowledge and experience.

What are the benefits of UoS?  There are many places that you can seek help from, as well as to get involved. The best place to seek help is the Students’ Union. The Careers Service is one of them and it is a good place to apply for future summer internships and placements. The school has various societies such as Engineering without Borders and Simurq UAV which are related to engineering.

What should you do before coming? Do lots of research! Check out the various stuffs and documents that you will have to prepare, the events that UoS organised for the prospective students and a little research about Sheffield. Get yourselves involved in various events during the Orientation Week and Introduction Week to make new friends. Lastly, be mentally prepared that you will feel homesick as you are far away from home. But this will shape you to be a better person as you will pick up new skills and gain valuable experiences. 

Global Engineering Challenge 2015 – To be or not to be, a global engineer?

By: Andrei-Claudiu Roibu

“I just want them to know

That I gave my all, did my best

Brought someone to happiness

Left this world a little better just because

I was here...”

(Beyoncé – I Was Here, United Nations World Humanitarian Day – click for video)

This is how I would sum up the Global Engineering Challenge organised by the Engineers Without Borders in collaboration with The University of Sheffield. An activity designed to teach young engineering students the values of cross-cutting cultural cleavages, develop solutions for third world problems and so on and so forth. You can read more of this on the University webpage, for I am not going to reproduce what the official text says.

No, if you spend your time in reading this blog, then I will make sure it’s worthwhile and you will be able to understand how this activity works, and why I think that in the end, any student should take part in it.

Before I write anything else, let me just state that I believe that honesty is the highest form of respect you can show a person. Thus, I shall be honest with you and tell you that I never gave a single thought to developing world countries. Although I am come from a poor country, I am proud of it. I also believe that one should solve his own problems, be it a country or person. I became an engineer because I love the technology and lifestyle in western civilization, where I intend to stay and work.

We can get back to talking about the GEC, having cleared that. What is there to talk about? You would ask, considering that one of the reasons EWB runs this project is raising awareness among engineers of the problems in developing countries. Well, this is what I wish to tell you about. I wish to speak about all the other things that GEC teaches you IF you wish to the thought.

The first thing that it teaches you is how to work in a team formed out of people from different backgrounds and engineering fields. When you first hear of it, it sounds easy...let me tell you that it’s not, especially when everyone wants to be “boss” without doing any work. Luckily, I was blessed to work in a good team, where everyone did their job, and as unofficial team leader, I was more than pleased with the results. GEC week teaches you how to make a difference between your personal pride as an engineer and/or person and accept other people’s points of view. It is surprising in an interesting and often nice way to see how different ideas from different fields contribute to a project, and eventually things turn up much better than you would have ever expected.

The second thing that you learn is project management. As engineers, we will find ourselves needing to think about the feasibility of a project, because there are many things that can be theoretically done, but only a few that can actually be done in practice. GEC teaches you how to quantify what can or cannot be done, using specific tools such as SWOT and PESTLE analysis for the entire project, or Stakeholder Analysis in order to understand what are the needs of all the parties (or groups of people) that are involved somehow in that project. Also, as engineers working on a project, we often find ourselves needing to justify to second and third parties our decisions and choices. Decision matrixes are another very useful tool that one can use for this and GEC teaches you how to do. Speaking about justifications, a pivotal component in any project is the budget. Nothing is free in this world, and when designing a system as an engineer, you need to bear in mind that we live in a capitalist society (either if we like it or not) and in order to be successful, you need to achieve more for less, i.e. be efficient.

The third and maybe the most important thing that GEC will teach you, is how to manage your time effectively. The demonstrators have really strict deadlines for both the large, design task, and smaller activities. These time conditions are frankly annoying most of the time, and you’ll end up hating them and even giving up on doing some of the activities because of the hard deadlines. However, if you were in a real-life work environment, not meeting the deadline for even the most trivial of tasks could cost you your job and/or life’s work. It might sound pessimistic, but it is how the world works. In my team, we had a really hard time getting our heads around the time limits in the first two days. However, starting in the second day of the GEC week, we got our heads in the game, and decided on a clear way of handling tasks. Eventually, we ended up finishing our project early, and just sitting around and chatting for most of the final GEC day. I am quite proud of what we did, to be honest. Although we finished early, all our work was done properly and we managed to win “Best Communicated Solution” in our HUB.

I will cut it short here, as I probably bored you to death already. The take-home idea of this blog should be that if you keep an open head in any project in which you take part in, it is almost impossible not to learn at least one useful thing. I learned at least 3 useful skills doing GEC, and that is why I am honestly happy I took part in it.

For us as engineers, learning never stops, and I believe that the difference between a proper engineer and one that is an engineer just because he has a piece a paper saying that he is, that the first one never stops learning, either from nature, the people he works with, the projects he does or even events such as GEC. Vivere!

PS. I would like to thank my mates and colleagues from GEC, Hub R, Team 5: Dan, Max, Tony, Miguel and Terence – you guys were and are the best!

Meet our International Engineering Ambassadors: Nada Adham

Name:  Nada Adham

Department:  Electronic and Electrical Engineering

Course:  BEng Electronic and Communication

What was your favorite subject at school?

At school, my favorite two subjects were Maths and Physics.

 How easy was it to settle into Sheffield?

I studied a foundation year at Sheffield International College. Well, at first it was quite hard. I was feeling homesick without my parents, family or friends. I felt very lonely as I didn’t know anyone in UK before coming. Although, I had come to UK once on a school trip, but it was mainly a camp. We didn’t go outside the camp that much.

The weather here is very cold and it gets dark much earlier compared to Egypt.

After that, I started getting to know people from my course and through societies. I made friends which I consider them as my best friends, who I can call friends for life.

After I joined the University of Sheffield, it became much easier. I already have friends but I’ve met more people and made more friends. Plus, Sheffield is a lovely place. I have started to feel home here. I guess, I’ll feel homesick after I finish my course here :p.

 How did you decide which degree course to take?

From grade 7, I decided to be an engineer. I was always impressed by my dad’s work (he’s a mechanical engineer). Plus, I was always getting full marks in maths and physics. I didn’t know which field of engineering I need to study. When I finished high school, I found that I’m more interested in communication and electricity.

 What advice would you give to people about to choose a university course?

I do agree that it’s a hard choice. You’ll think that it’s this choice will affect your future career and the rest of your life. Just brainstorm and think about everything you might be interested in studying, and choose one of them. Actually, none of us can be sure that he/she have made the right choice. Your studies at the university and even your activities will let you discover new skills that you never knew that you have.

What do you particularly enjoy and why?

At the university, I enjoy lab work where I can apply what I’ve learned and when I connect circuits. I also love the learning atmosphere. You have to be self-motivated and make the effort to learn at the university, you can’t just depend on the lectures. You have to read books and spend time at home or in the library studying. There are also extra-curricular activities like Engineers without borders (EWB) and Sheffield Formula Racing (SFR) which I enjoyed joining. You can apply what you’ve learned and you’ll exchange information with engineers from other departments.

Apart from that, there are hundreds of societies and clubs. You can also take part in volunteering work or have an internship in summer.  There’s also Give It A Go (GIAG) which makes trips to different cities around UK. You can go ice-skating in the Arena Don-Valley stadium or watch a movie in Cineworld.  

  Best job/most fun/most fulfilling/challenges?

I participated in the international language festival with the International Students Committee (ISC). It was an amazing experience where you can teach others your own language and learn other languages. 

How is studying your subject or methods of learning different at university than at school?

Learning at the university is completely different from school. At the university, it’ll depend more on your own efforts as the lectures don’t provide you with all the material you’ll need to fully understand the subject. You’ll always need to read books and use Wikipedia or youtube to fully understand the topics. You might even sleep at the Information Commons (IC) somedays.

What do you like to do when you are not working on your degree?

There’s a lot to do here. I play boxing and I go swimming in the weekend. I was also doing volunteering in a school. I also go on Give It A Go trips. I go to the theatre or to cineworld to watch a movie.