Three-Day E-Fest Asia Pacific Draws More than 1,600 to Marwadi University

ASME Engineering Festivals™, or E-Fests, kicked off 2020 with E-Fest Asia Pacific in Rajkot, India. More than 1,600 students, educators and other guests attended the event, which was held Feb. 28-March 1 at Marwadi University.

The three-day celebration for engineering students encompassed an assortment of useful and educational sessions addressing topics ranging from professional skills development to ASME’s codes and standards activities. There were also several student competitions including the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, the Student Design Competition, the Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D Challenge, the Oral Competition and the Elevator Pitch Competition.

Highlights on Friday, Feb. 28, included an opening lamp-lighting ceremony featuring Prof. K. K. Aggarwal, chair of the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), and Gautam Dutta, senior director of marketing at Siemens Digital Industries Software. Events included a special session on “Mastering the Elevator Pitch,” which included tips on how students could present their ideas successfully in short, succinct “elevator pitch” presentations, with Dilshad Sulaiman of ITER, Devendra Parmar from Sarar-3D, 2018 Engineering for Change (E4C) Fellow Harsh Vyas, and Dhruv Patel of Silver Oak University. There also was a Biomimicry Challenge Workshop, which was presented by Prashant Dhawan, co-founder of Bio-mimicry Network India.

Another highpoint of the event was the keynote session on Saturday evening, featuring a talk show-style interview with Dr. Seetha Somasundaram, the renowned program director of India’s historic Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) that launched in 2013. Moderated by Aaron Weinerman of ASME Global Public Affairs, the conversation covered a wide range of topics including MOM’s seemingly insurmountable challenges, the power of women in science and engineering, the importance of ASME standards, and the international significance of India becoming the first country to reach Martian orbit on the first try. Attracting an audience of approximately 1,000 attendees, Dr. Seetha’s words of determination and inspiration were balanced by on-the-ground practicality and in-the-clouds idealism.

E-Fest Asia Pacific also hosted several of the Society’s major student competitions, including the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge (HPVC). A team of students from Thakur College of Engineering and Technology placed first overall — and received the $1,000 top prize — at the HPVC, in which engineering students put the human-powered vehicles they designed and built to the test in men’s and women’s speed races and a two-and-half hour endurance competition. The Thakur College team also placed third in the women’s speed event and third in the endurance event.

The HPVC team that placed second overall, SCMS School of Engineering and Technology, took home the $750 second prize as well as a trophy for finishing second in the design category and a special Best Innovation Award. The team from the E-Fest’s host school, Marwadi University, finished third overall, receiving $500 as well as an additional $250 for taking top honors in the endurance race. Other winners at the HPVC in India included the team from IIT Roorkee, which placed first in the design category and received a $250 prize; National Institute of Technology, Silchar, which finished first in the men’s speed race and received $250; and Chandigarh University, which took the $250 top prize in the women’s speed race category.

KLS Gogte Institute of Technology was the big winner in another major competition at E-Fest Asia Pacific, the Student Design Competition. For the 2020 SDC challenge “Building to the Sky,” students were tasked with designing and building a compact engineering system capable of manufacturing a tower made exclusively from standard-sized sheets of paper. In addition to the KLS Gogte Institute of Technology team, which won the $500 first prize, the top three teams at the competition were NIT Silchar, which finished second and received $300, followed by Vellore Institute of Technology, which took home the $150 third prize.

Other prize winners at E-Fest Asia Pacific included host school Marwadi University, which won the $250 first prize at the IAM3D™ “Unmanned Aerial Racing Cargo Vehicle” Challenge; Swapnil Umredkar from the GH Raisoni College of Engineering, the winner of the $750 top prize at the Oral Competition; and Radhika Dharmadhikari from Cummins College of Engineering for Women, Pune, who took home the $250 first prize at the Elevator Pitch Competition.

The E-Fest in India also featured two new student competitions. In the first competition, Aeromania, teams of up to five students were asked to design, fabricate and pilot a radio-controlled, propeller-type plane that could perform a set of maneuvers. Students competing in the second new event, the REboat Challenge, were tasked with designing and building a remote-controlled boat that could complete a set of exercises specifically designed to validate solar energy powered boats as a valid means of transport.

Two additional E-Fests in the United States that were originally scheduled to take place this month — E-Fest North and E-Fest South — have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In their place, ASME will instead present a new online event, E-Fest Digital, from 11:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m. EDT on April 25. For more information about the free event or to register, visit https://efestdigital.asme.org/home.

To learn more about ASME’s E-Fest program, visit https://efests.asme.org.