The Board of European Students of Technology (Best) helps students be the best by becoming more internationally minded and developing capacities required for working on an international level.
Last week the Delft Best Engineering Competition (dBEC) set six student teams the task of using their technical knowledge, analytical skills and creativity to provide winning ideas for improving Japan’s precautions and preparedness for earthquakes and tsunamis.
Best, which was founded in 1989 and has local groups at some eighty universities worldwide, including TU Delft, organises various activities throughout the year, including courses, sporting events and engineering competitions, like this dBEC, which as particularly international in character, as the vast majority of competitors were international students from China, India, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Greece and elsewhere.
A jury comprised of TU Delft professors was on hand to choose the top three teams based on their concepts and designs, which included ideas for erecting sea barriers, floating shelters and rescue centers, as well as smart phone apps for aiding people during disasters. The students were also asked to design an emergency plan for the first few days after a natural disaster, as well as a redevelopment plan for the areas hit hardest by last month’s tsunami.
“I participated because I wanted to challenge myself, test my knowledge and skills and compete against other engineers,” says Rangan Dutta, from India, adding that “the most important thing for me was not to win but rather to find out what solutions me and my teammates could design when faced with time pressure and a highly competitive environment.”
Winning this local competition also means an opportunity to travel and match wits against winning teams from other European universities. This year’s dBEC was won by the ‘Chapan’ team, whose team members – Spark Xie, Zhi Shuai, Ge Xiaoliang and Liu Pan – will now participate in the Benelux Best Engineering Competition (beBEC), in Durbuy, Belgium, later this month, where they’ll compete against winning teams from the universities of Brussels, Liège, Louvain-la-Neuve, Ghent and Leuven. The beBEC’s winner will then go on to compete in the European Best Engineering Competition (EBEC), held in Istanbul this August, against the winners of all other regional contests.
Evgenios Kornaropoulos, a TU student from Greece, regrets that his team didn’t prepare sufficiently for the Delft contest. “All teams received information about the competition’s topic one day before, and some teams were smart and did some research in advance, which gave them more time to focus on the design itself during the competition,” he says, adding that he plans to participate again next year. “It’s very challenging and lots of fun, and I hope more students will compete in the dBEC next year, because the more participants, the more exciting the competition becomes.”
If you’re interested in joining the next Delft Best Engineering Competition or any other Best activity, check the website and apply online.
www.bestdelft.com
www.best.eu.org
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