Cyber Junkyard winners rewarded

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23 January 2008 News

The winners of the annual Cyber Junkyard competition were recently announced at a gala event.

For the first time in the competition's history, two universities, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and University of Johannesburg, shared first place.

The winners of the 2007 Cyber Junkyard competition

The competition, sponsored by Siemens and Festo, seeks to introduce young engineers to the industry by working on a real application, and thus preparing them for the world beyond academia.

Last year's competition saw 13 tertiary institutes competing for honours. These included 10 South African universities, as well as participants from Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia.

With equipment supplied by Festo and Siemens, teams were required to build a pilot process plant that demonstrated energy efficient process automation in a simple fluid pumping application.

"The engineering ideas that were generated by participants were outstanding, especially considering that the students have never worked in the industry," says Festo Didactic manager, Tom Webster. "This is the first time the judges were unable to select a clear winner. This is indicative of the overall standard which was exceptionally high with 10 of the 13 participants being worthy of a top three spot."

The winning teams received R100 000 and R30 000 from Siemens and Festo respectively to purchase equipment, while individual team members were offered either an Xbox 360 or Siemens laptop.

The team from the Zimbabwe National University of Science and Technology was awarded a special merit award and two weeks training at Siemens Training Institute for its presentation on efficiency energy savings.

"The Zimbabwe team members really impressed the judges with their tenacity and cohesion, and their hard work despite having limited resources," says Webster.

"Festo is proud to be part of an event like this one and is looking forward to next year's competition. We are also impressed with the quality and enthusiasm of engineering undergraduates and hope that the competition and, indeed, southern Africa's universities can continue to encourage this standard."

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Cyber Junkyard winners rewarded

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