Keep reading to find out, straight from the horse’s mouth, what the originators of Mechaton had to say about the competition, the student – contestants, and the effects of their efforts.
The eponymous challenge Veolia presented future engineers with involved heat recovery from an industrial facility. The students had 48 hours to tackle this daunting challenge. What they also had was a room to work at, pizza as well as tea and coffee to down it with. The results could not have been better!
This is what prof. Tomasz Kubiak, Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, had to say about the competition
‘Mechaton is a mechanical engineering incarnation of a similar type of competition called Hackathon and addressed to IT students. We wanted to prove that engineering challenges can be equally fascinating, if not more so, because their solutions are physically tangible. The task the students were asked to complete is what Veolia engineers actually deal with at work. This practical aspect provided additional motivated for the students to compete in Mechaton. The outcomes exceeded out expectations. We were extremely impressed with the ideas and designs the students came up with. I am also deeply convinced that without the support and effective collaboration of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Veolia the event would not have been so successful’.
Adrian Sienicki, Veolia Energia Łódź Head Development, also praised the initiative
‘I was really surprised to see so many students participate in Mechaton and I found their projects equally impressive. The contestants came up with full-fledged proposals for recovering heat from industrial processes. That was the challenge that Veolia – based on a case study from the region of Łódź – presented the Mechaton contestants with. All the projects are very interesting and inspiring for our specialists. Mechaton surely resulted in valuable insights for Veolia activities related to innovation in district heating’.
Chair of the competition jury, dr inż. Jacek Świniarski, Department of Strength of Materials, shared how difficult a task it was to select the winners.
‘Teams of students following different degree programs and at different levels of advancement in their programs tackled the challenge in ways that completely amazed us. Ingenious, perceptive and insightful – that is how I would describe Mechaton participants’ work’.
The winners of the first place were the team: Michał Ozimek (coordinator), Alicja Tworek, Bartłomiej Dyniak, Kamil Owczarczyk and Remigiusz Pietrzykowski, all studying power engineering.
Second place was awarded to the team: Adam Jeżyński (coordinator) and Jakub Dabbous – both studying mechanical engineering, and Maciej Tutak and Jan Nowiński – both pursuing a degree in transport.
The third place was awarded to the team: Jakub Michalski (coordinator), Rafał Parfieniuk, Stanisław Janiak, Krzysztof Jachowicz and Amelia Kiełbasińska. All of the students on this team study automatic control and robotics.