AVEVA, a specialist in industrial software, driving digital transformation and sustainability, has announced the winners of the 2021 AVEVA Academic Program Competition, which was open to students in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and European Union
Entrants were judged on several criteria including the quality, completeness, and precision of their project entries, as well as their Process Engineering and Simulation abilities. Overall winners gain the unique opportunity to conduct a three-month internship at the AVEVA offices in Lake Forest, California, or receive the equivalent of US$3,000 in prize money.
The AVEVA Academic Program Competition, now in its third year, is designed to provide chemical engineering students with the unique opportunity to develop their engineering skills. Students are invited to solve real-world engineering problems utilising AVEVA Process Simulation, an integrated platform encompassing the complete engineering lifecycle of design, simulation, and training, developed to deliver the next generation of engineers. It is an easy to learn and use software so students with no prior experience are also encouraged to enter the competition.
The 2021 competition was split into three parts, with deadlines spread across three dates – 15 February, 15 March and April 15 2021. This enabled the students to enter the competition multiple times, while also supporting their academic coursework and enabling eager participants to tackle a new and different project on three different occasions. As a result, contestants gained a wide range of skills, knowledge, and practical experience using AVEVA’s Process Simulation, by working on a unique project for each phase.
Dexter Alarcon, one of the overall winners from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, commented, “The most unique aspect of both this design competition and AVEVA Process Simulation software we used, was the opportunity to work on a dynamic simulation as falls outside the scope of our curricular design and process control classes. The chance to work on developing and testing the control system for a distillation column was as exciting as it was challenging. As we look to launch our professional careers as engineers, we know the skills acquired from this challenge will be extremely valuable as we continue to seek and solve many more exciting chemical engineering challenges in the future.”
Encouraging Innovation from the Next Generation of Engineers
The AVEVA Academic Program Competition plays a significant role in helping to provide growth and development opportunities for future engineers. AVEVA Process Simulation promotes attaining organisational efficiencies through minimising operating costs, improving designs that reduce process utility costs, and reducing CapEx costs by optimising equipment size.
“AVEVA’s goal is to support the innovation coming from future engineers – so we created these competitions academic to ensure that students and graduates are able to deploy their capabilities into real-life scenarios. Since we started these competitions in 2018, we have seen entries from some of the brightest and highly talented students from more than 50 renowned universities across North America and Europe. Having access to innovative AVEVA software empowers the students, the future engineers, with rewarding and as well as practical experience. We continue to be highly impressed with the quality of entries we receive every year,” commented Mihaela Hahne, global program manager, Academic at AVEVA.
