K-Drive Once Again Becomes Only Team from MENA Region to be Shortlisted among Top 10 Finalists
Khalifa University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students Maryam Abbas Sajwani, Reem AlNuaimi, Khadeeja Khaled Hashem Mohamed Aljaberi, and Sumaya AlZubaidi of the ‘K-Drive’ design team have entered the final round of the IEEE International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC) 2019 competition that will be held during the last week of July 2019 at the University of Wisconsin, US.
The Khalifa University team has once again become the only one from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to be among the top 10 selected for the finals. An international student competition for innovation, conservation, and effective use of electrical energy, the IFEC is open to college and university student teams from recognized undergraduate engineering programs.
The K-Drive team crossed the second stage when it was shortlisted out of a total of 16 teams, after confidently presenting the progress report about their prototype to the judges’ panel during the IEEE-IFEC 2019 workshop at Anaheim, US. The challenge ‘electric drive for bicycles’ (E-Drive for a Bicycle), consists of designing and developing the prototype of a battery-three phase output drive, including the motor control and user interface design.
Sajwani said: “We are extremely happy to be the one of the 10 teams to be shortlisted for the final phase of the IFEC competition. We were quite surprised when we received this amazing news about our selection, as the level of expertise and technical designs of the others teams were equal to ours.”
Faculty adviser Associate Professor Dr. Balanthi Beig said: “Our senior design team’s work is on par with the other teams and our students confidently answered all technical questions clearly.”
Aljaberi, who could not be present with the team at Anaheim, congratulated other members, and said: “Working on this project has been a great experience. This competition is challenging us in a very fruitful way and is putting our engineering knowledge and skills to the test. We are truly motivated and excited about the final phase.” Aljaberi intends to join the team for the finals at Wisconsin.
Sajwani added: “Currently, our main focus is testing of our overall system. We have been vigorously testing multiple parameters individually and coupling it with other aspects to see the response of the system. We believe we would be able to resolve any issue within the actual competition timeline.”
The students attributed their second stage success to Dr. Beig, and technical support from the ECE Lab engineers Suma Ramamurthy Rao, Saikrishna Kanukollu and Malik Abdul Haleem. The top 10 teams apart from Khalifa University include Delhi Technological University, DHBW-Stuttgart, Drexel University, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover, National Ilan University, Tsinghua University, University of Belgrade, Utah State University and Virginia Tech.
The IEEE-IFEC 2019 competition is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Power Electronics Society (PELS), Power & Energy Society (PES), Industry Application Society (IAS) and Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA).
News Writer
11 April 2019
