IEEE Bangladesh Section Students, Young Professionals, Women in Engineering and Members’ Congress 20

IEEE Bangladesh Section Students, Young Professionals, Women in Engineering and Members’ Congress 2018, recognizable as the most enormous and celebrated event of the Section, was held on the 30th November 2018 at the Auditorium Complex of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. The grand event in an auditorium packed to the rafters with more than 600 participants from as many as 32 different universities, including student members, graduate student members or Young Professional members, respected Professional Members, our honorable branch mentors and counselors and the respectable executive committee members of IEEE Bangladesh Section, was inaugurated by Prof. Dr. Celia Shahnaz, Chair, IEEE Bangladesh Section at 9 in the morning. In her opening speech, the chair of the section highlighted the Section’s top events, which took places all over the year throughout the country. She mentioned about the recent awards that Bangladesh Section achieved including “Outstanding Section Membership Recruitment Performance” in 2015, 2016, 2017 and finally “2018 Outstanding Section Membership Recruitment and Retention Performance recognition” from IEEE MGA” in 2018. She talked about the admirable and massive growth of the Bangladesh section from a membership count of 56 when it was established to a wholesome number of 3,600 spanning 36 Student Branches, 9 Society Chapters and 2 Affinity Groups (YP and WIE). The whole program was also a part of the celebration of the Silver Jubilee of IEEE Bangladesh Section. The next two sessions were conducted by Mr. Azfar Adib, Manager of IoT & M2M Services at Grameenphone Ltd who delivered a speech about the Role of IEEE BDS in Strengthening Industry-Academia Collaboration and Mr. Shekh Tanvir Ahamed, CTO and Co-founder at Hamba Studio Ltd whose session was on Game Development as Sustainable industry Engagement before the participants and the speakers went to enjoy the first tea break of the day. At around 11 on the clock, the session of Humanitarian Activities Committee of IEEE Bangladesh Section started. The Humanitarian Activities Committee (HAC) of IEEE is concerned with the development and fostering of sustainable technology for the support of humanity and different aspects of human life. The HAC session was conducted by Professor Dr. Shaikh Anowarul Fattah and the section student representative, Abhijeet Biswas. During this interactive session, the participants were randomly divided into 12 groups and were each assigned a case to solve by applying sustainable technology. They were asked to explain how their ideas will mitigate the crisis that was presented in the case.

This was followed by the Young Professional session which was conducted by the YP chair, Abdullah Rocky. The invited speaker, Abdullah Al Maruf,Head of Engineering, Algomatrix in his speech threw light on the importance of effectively setting goals in certain stages of life like after graduation or before getting into a university. The second speaker of the session was Mahdi Mashrur Matin,Co-founder of Obboy Labs,CA Manager & Internet Security Consultant at ICT Division, Bangladesh who also shared his thoughts and notions with the audience. After the lunch and prayer break came to a close at 2:30, the participants came out on the premises of the BUET campus to capture a group photo. Following that, the WIE track began shortly. The Women in Engineering session had three parts, which were conducted by Runia Hossain, Director in Telecom Services of Innovative Minds Consulting Limited, IMC, Esmat Ara Sarker, Head of Technology of Financial Planning & Control in Banglalink and a panel discussion joined by Anika Sanzida Khan, Integrated Network Lead Engineer, Banglalink, Rayeesa Nafis, Deputy General Manager of Radio Planning Technology in Grameenphone Ltd and Tasneem Tariq, Architect and Assistant Professor of Dept. of Architecture in Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology. Irtiza Haque, Senior System Engineering, Digital and Analytics Operations, IT & Service Development, Technology in Grameenphone Ltd moderated the panel during the discussion. And soon after that, Mr. Abul Al Arabi, who has had a very promising career in robotics and currently an Executive Committee member of IEEE RAS Chapter Society of IEEE BDS took the stage and enlightened the audience with his talk on ‘Era of Robotics’ before the participants went down the hall to enjoy the second tea break of the day. The infographic posters that were brought by the members of the student branches were presented to the judges during the break at 4 pm whereas the sessions resumed inside the auditorium with a talk on Demystifying Nuclear Power Technology at about the same time. The talk was presented by Sk Azmaeen Bin Amir, Former President of BUET Nuclear Engineering Club and Abrar Jahin Nafi. The next session was by the Student Activity Committee (SAC) of IEEE Bangladesh Section. This was a very interactive and lively session. Participants had to indulge in an interesting competition in groups. The groups engaged in a friendly battle of words with each other to defend their proposed idea to solve the case which was handed to them in an earlier session. In the final stage of the competition, the respective groups displayed their ideas in the form of a theatrical drama to promote their idea in an intriguing manner. A video exhibition was held soon afterwards. Every student branch of IEEE Bangladesh Section were asked to submit a video showing their achievements and expectations from the Section in the following year. The closing of the day was preceded by a vibrant cultural session where students from 9 different institutions performed and entertained the audience.

After a day-long series of sessions the grand gathering concluded with a vote of appreciation towards the hard working volunteers without whom this arrangement would not have been possible.