By NNN-UNESCO
Paris : Mr. Ali Uddin Ansari, Director of the Centre for Environment Studies and Socioresponsive Engineering has been selected by UNSECO to chair International Jury for UNESCO Engineerig Award. An international jury has selected 30 teams from 31 countries as finalists in this year’s Mondialogo Engineering Award, organized by UNESCO and DaimlerChrysler.
Every project team is made up of groups of students from two technical universities or colleges, with one group coming from a developing country and the other from an industrialized nation.
Projects were selected for their feasibility, quality and creativity as well as for their relevance to the United Nations’ Millennium Goals. The jury also rewarded their ability to contribute to intercultural dialogue and the exchange of knowledge.
The short-listed teams will attend the Mondialogo Symposium on Dec 7-10 in Mumbai (India). It is there that the ten best teams will be honoured with the Engineering Award and a cash prize of €20,000 each. Another 20 teams will be given €5,000 each and Honourable Mention.
The short list was drawn from the ranks of the 3,200 engineering students from 89 countries who registered for the second edition of the Engineering Award.
The teams had six months in which to devise a technical solution that will have a direct practical benefit for the population of a developing country and help to improve their quality of life.
Partner teams generally cooperated via Mondialogo’s Internet Portal, where a virtual office is set up for every project team (www.mondialogo.org). But participants were free to use any channels of communication.
The selection of projects and teams was carried out by a seven-member international jury of leading scientists and engineers:
– Peggy Oti-Boateng (Ghana), Director of the Technology Consultancy Centre at the University of Kumasi, Ghana, and member of the UNESCO Working Group for Technology and Poverty Reduction
– Kamel Ayadi (Tunisia), President of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations
– Ali Uddin Ansari (India), Director of the Centre for Environment Studies and Socioresponsive Engineering
– Paul Jowitt (Scotland), Director of the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology
– Shirley M. Malcom (USA), Head of Education and Human Resources of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
– Walter Erdelen (Germany), Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO
– Bharat Balasubramanian (Germany), Vice President Group Research & Advanced Engineering E/E, IT and Processes at DaimlerChrysler AG
The engineering contest is part of the initiative “Mondialogo – Intercultural Dialogue and Exchange”, launched by DaimlerChrysler and UNESCO in October 2003. The Engineering Award aims to promote intercultural dialogue, understanding, respect and tolerance, as well as knowledge transfer between engineering students on all continents.