Eagle Era

An overview of the Engineering and Technology Club’s Projects With a Purpose event

By Suhani Thakkar

From beating procrastination to addressing the water crisis, the MPR was bursting with creative ideas on March 11th as students presented their innovative engineering solutions to real-world problems. The Engineering and Technology Club (ENT) hosted a competition where students researched solutions for current issues in teams and presented their ideas to professionals in the field. 

This event was the result of the hard work and dedication of the club’s officers and council members, including Club President Shaunak Jog (12). “We have been working on this event for well over a month now. We have been holding workshops weekly to help members develop their projects and teaching them how to approach their problem with an engineering mindset.”

Rohan Babbellapati (10), a club officer, said, “Organizing the event was a struggle. Finding judges who were willing to come and were experts in the field was extremely difficult and took us a couple weeks and a lot of reaching out.”

In the end, the event was a success, and students who participated, like Yaalini Gokul (10), said they gained a lot from the experience. “I loved developing our project and being able to do research on something that I really found meaningful,” she said. “Our group focused on how procrastination can be fixed using AI, which is something that impacts many people around me, so I felt like I was working on something bigger than myself.”

This was precisely the goal of the event, as officers worked together to create an event they hoped would change the way people thought about engineering. Jog explained, “When people think about engineering projects, they first think of circuits, machines, and constructing something with their hands, but rarely the research and problem-solving that comes first. We wanted our members to find meaning in the creative process of engineering and developing solutions before jumping headfirst into building.”

[Left to right] Ms. Prabhakaran, Judge Syam Krishna Babbellapati, Reva Mekala (10), Shaunak Jog (12), Rohan Babbellapati (10), Anusha Naik (11), Amy Li (11), and Judge Sunny Todkari posed for a photo at the event (Photo Credit: Shaunak Jog (12)).

This event gave many students more clarity into a possible future engineering career. Gokul said, “I felt like I was getting a real insight into what it is like to be an engineer with this project, which is something that I loved since I hope to pursue this field in the future.”

The event’s judges also praised the showcase for helping students better understand the real world of engineering. Judge Syam Krishna Babbellapati said, “I loved how realistic all of the research was and how much thought the students put into it. They really took everything into consideration like an engineer would and talked about things that people in this field are trying to solve today.”