The fourth edition of SS12 ASIA: AGE OF INNOVATION 2018, a Coding and Making Challenge organized by Madras IEEE Education Society, was hosted in NSBM (National School of Business Management) Green University Town, Homagama, Colombo, Sri Lanka by IEEE Sri Lanka section on 8th and 9th of September 2018 in partnership with Universities and leading technology industry companies across Asia Pacific, UAE, Africa and Afganisthan. The event was selected to receive partial financial support in IEEE PES Member Driven Initiatives Campaign. The challenge is conducted annually to recognize the best social innovation application and this year the theme given was: ‘EMPATHY TO ENGINEERING: SOLUTIONS FOR MACROISSUES’.

The domains selected were the areas covered by UN Sustainable Development Goals addressing the issues like Poverty and Famine, Disaster Management and first aid, Special Needs, Women Safety, Healthcare, Illiteracy and so on. The two days marked a high quality tech time for all the people concerned and the event ended with the promise of the next edition of the event being hosted by Stamford University, Thailand.

The event was conducted in four tracks –

INNOVATION CHALLENGE:

Pilots were called for and thirty pilots registered from 8 countries. They conducted prelims of the innovation challenge at their planned dates and one team was selected as winner. The winner was selected on the basis of the Creativity, novelty and usefulness to society.

MAKER FAIR:

Maker Fair track is organized to help the students display their technical skills and team work. Under this abstracts will be called for and evaluated for their social usefulness and ability to be converted into a product.

SS12 JUNIOR EINSTEIN TRACK:

Fresh minds cater for fresh innovations in the domains untouched and for the issues unresolved. School children with innovative ideas were invited to submit projects on the theme given.

SS12 VIRTUAL TRACK:

Participants who cannot reach the venue physically were invited to register for virtual track to present their projects online. This track is introduced for the countries for which pilots are not available.

The finals were conducted to a huge 400 plus number of participants, out of which 301 were IEEE members, from all the above countries with all different tracks planned meticulously. A volunteer force of above 100 young professionals from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and USA worked towards making it a grand success. Speakers were invited from the above countries as well as juries. The total number of projects for the finals were around 140 on all tracks put together. The topics discussed on invited talks by speakers from industry and academia varied from the theme of the event to innovation basics, how to commercialize the projects and so on.

Ramalatha Marimuthu
General Chair of SS12
Professor, Department of ECE, KCT
Board of Governors, IEEE SSIT 2017 – 2019