Speak Out for Engineering - Rest of the World Final 2018

The beautiful City of Christchurch, New Zealand was chosen as the venue for the 2018 Rest of World SOFE.

A city which is being rebuilt after the devastating 2011 earthquake seemed a fitting backdrop for the best of the SOFE Regional winners of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers to compete for the ultimate prize of the Best of the Regional Presenters.

The winning competitors from six Regions representing the Americas, Europe, South East Asia, North East Asia, Southern Asia and, of course, Oceania, gathered at the Commodore Hotel in Christchurch on the evening of 16 February to be warmly welcomed by the Oceania Region Chair, Ian Mash and the New Zealand representatives who organised the event.  The evening was spent introducing the competitors to each other and networking with some of the Oceania representatives.

The next morning began with the order of the presentations being decided by an impartial process.  After an introduction by Ian Mash and a safety briefing, the competition got underway.  The presentations were:

• Shajee Jurangpathy (Southern Asia) - "Thermoacoustic cooling"
• Mohammad Allam (South East Asia) - "Autonomous vehicles"
• Roman Stromeyer (Americas) - "CFD modeling of wings"
• Andrew McLaren (Oceania)  - "Aerial grasping for drones"
• Donald Dalli (Europe) - "Hip joint test rig"
• Anne Beh (North East Asia) - "Sustainable solutions for transport".

As winners of their individual regions, the standards were understandably high.  The three judges, Andrew Lezala, (Australian Branch Chair), Siddartha Khastgir (International Young Member Committee Chair) and Tom Morton (Engineering NZ) had a lot of deliberating to do before making their decision.  The competitors were notified of the results during the group dinner that evening: 

• Winner, Rest of World SOFE 2018 - Donald Dalli (Europe)
• Second place - Andrew McLaren (Oceania)
• Third place - Shajee Jurangpathy (Southern Asia).

The judges hinted that there were not many points separating the competitors with the high standard making judging very difficult.

Our congratulations go to all competitors for competing through the various heats in their respective countries to culminate in a very successful Rest of World SOFE competition in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Our thanks go to the NZ Organising Team for the logistics surrounding the competition which was enjoyed by all who attended.