A STUDENT project that uses social networking, short message service (SMS) and Smart Communications Inc.’s money transfer to gather relief goods for communities hit by disasters won this year’s Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (Smart Sweep) Innovation and Excellence Award.
The student team from Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) won P500,000 for themselves and P500,000 in grants for their school last Saturday at the SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City.
Charese Olmoguez (right), student team leader of Ateneo de Davao, explains to Smart SWEEP judges how her group’s search and rescue management system, which uses global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information system (GIS) data, works. Ateneo de Davao won second place in last Saturday’s Smart SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Award. (PHOTO FROM SMART PUBLIC AFFAIRS)
The Smart Sweep Innovation and Excellence Award was dominated by Ateneo schools, with ADMU taking the first and third spots and Ateneo de Davao University taking second place.
The ADMU team of Marc Ericson Santos, Adrian Khan, Carlos Miguel Lacson and Marty Peterson Tan was mentored by Ronell Sicat. The team created an integrated system that allowed people not only to donate online but to also invite friends in their social network to donate to their communities of choice. The system also tracks the donations.
University of San Carlos, the lone Cebu finalist in the nationwide contest of mobile solutions to community response to disasters, did not win. The USC student team led by Mark Joseph Salvado submitted a system that detects fires in houses and then alerts a community monitoring center and the fire department. The system transmitted alert data using frequency modulation (FM) and Internet protocol (IP).
Cebu was wiped out in the PalaECEpan, a nationwide quiz bee on electronics and communications engineering. All Cebu teams were eliminated on the first day of the event.
Science and Technology Education Center (Stec) in Basak, Lapu-Lapu City saved Cebu from a shutout by winning twice. Charles Pascual, a fourth year high school student at Stec, topped students from all over the country in the first Doon Po Sa Amin (DPSA) quiz bee.
Stec, under adviser Donald Dungog, was also named best in Math in the topic category of the DPSA Learning Challenge, a nationwide contest on the best submissions for web-based information and educational materials. Stec submitted as projects a study of local measurements like gantang; a study of the academic performance of Lapu-Lapu students and how information on their current standings affect future performances; and a project to help out of school youth re-enroll.
For his win, Pascual got P5,000 for himself, P5,000 for Dungog, his coach, and another P5,000 for Stec. For winning best in Math, Stec won P30,000 and mobile Internet kits for the teachers and students who are part of the team.
A student team from the Ateneo de Davao University, meanwhile, got second place in the Smart Sweep Innovation and Excellence award.
The student team of Charese Olmoguez, Ann Marie Rosells Balinas, and Flora May dela Cruz had as mentor, engineer Marloue Pidor.
They submitted a system for search and rescue management in the Davao Gulf using global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information system (GIS) data.
The Ateneo de Davao team won P300,000 for themselves and another P300,000 in grants for their school.
Winning third place was a student project that made use of Smart’s person location service to provide information on flooding through SMS, multimedia messaging service (MMS) and the Internet. The team won P150,000 for themselves and another P150,000 in grants for their school.
The Smart Sweep is an annual contest among engineering schools that have partnered with Smart. The projects must provide mobile solutions to help communities deal with disasters.
Mon Isberto, head of Smart’s public affairs group, said the contest focuses on that theme because the company feels that more can be done to help communities deal with disasters.
While none of the projects submitted in the five stagings of the contest have been commercialized, the prize money has helped winning schools upgrade or purchase teaching equipment.
Maria Magdalena Gatdula, an adviser of the Bulacan State University (BSU), said her school was able to purchase LCD projectors, PC sets, laptops and licensed software using the P500,000 in grants that they won in the 3rd Smart Sweep.
The win two years ago, Gatdula said, inspired BSU students that the school typically gets 30 project proposals from students whenever Smart Sweep opens. The proposals are then culled because each school is limited to 10 entries.
Gatdula said most of the proposal submitted by the students also serve as their thesis projects.
Isberto said the panel defense component of the contest helps prepare engineering students for work, where they have to give presentations to their managers and other company officials.
Max is a journalist and blogger based in Cebu. He has written and edited for such publications as The Freeman, The Independent Post, Today, Sun.Star Cebu, Cebu Daily News, Philstar Life, and Rappler.
He is also a mobile app and web developer and co-founded InnoPub Media with his wife Marlen.
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