We are close to the end of the Final Round of EBEC, the last day of competition and the last chance of this event for the participants to prove they are the best engineers in Europe.

Today, last but not least, our students are working to complete Škoda’s task, which guaranteed us an astonishing show during the prototypes’ tests as well as the exposition of brilliant solutions and prove of competences and skills.

The task, as mentioned in the previous article, was about building a robot capable of extinguish several fires, simulating a fire in a factory plant.

In the meanwhile, Eaton come for the third time in a row at the Final Round of EBEC, bringing one of the problems they are facing right now in engineering level and commercialisation.

The participants had to define a start up, complete with vision and commercial plan and propose a viable solution to solve a problem related to a well defined street, Corso Francia, one of the biggest and most crowded of Turin, for the reduction of queues and emission of greenhouse gases.

The challenges are over for this edition of EBEC, but it is not over with you. Stay tuned tomorrow to find out who are the winners of each task and the general ones. Stay tuned to know the BEST engineers of Europe! 

It is the third day of competition of the Final Round of EBEC and today we had a whole reboot for both the challenges.

After the free day, where both participants and organizers had the time to chill, visit Turin, relax  their minds and charge their batteries, FCA and Škoda’s tasks have been described to our Finalists. 

For the Case Study, FCA challenged the creativity of the students into defining several aspect of a business case related to autonomous driving: level of the autonomous drive, target of the product, applicable environment, conceptual design and layout of the vehicle. 

Furthermore, the business case needed to include details about the data collection algorithm. A really challenging request that left a lot of space for brilliant ideas to implement. 

In factories’ productions, if accidental fire started, production would stop, causing economic losses not only for the damages of fire, but also due to the arrest of production and the water used to extinguish fire. This is the reason why Škoda asked for the Team Design a robot capable of annihilate the flames in the shortest time possible.

Strong imagination, flexibility and proactiveness were proved, interesting ideas came out and as always, our participants DESIGN THE FUTURE, TODAY.

Stay tuned to know more about a new Case study and the fire robot solutions of tomorrow! 

New and old mixed in the second day: a new challenge for the Case Study and the old one for the Team Design.

AvioAero invited the students to a reflection: hybrid systems are booming in cars but not really used in aerospace, hence the teams had to present such a hybrid system but for planes taking into account as many details as possible.

As usually, the suggested solutions included brilliant ideas and interesting hints for the company. 

Finally, after 2 working days, the Team Design participants had the possibility to show their prototypes to Danieli Officine Meccaniche, demonstrating high inventice and creativity, helped by the possibility of printing components in 3D thanks to Fabula 3d and the technical support of Meccano.

We wish all the participants good luck and encourage them to keep with the creativity and productivity showed so far!

Stay tuned for the next challenges, where the students will be able to design the future, today.

EBEC Final has started and for this first day of competition ABB and Danieli Officine Meccaniche introduced their thrilling challenges.

For the Case Study, ABB asked the students to imagine themselves as a Start up, e-Moby and define some innovative service connected to sustainable mobility, defining a typical customer, possible partnership and costs of the project.

In the meanwhile, Danieli Officine Meccaniche asked the Team Design participants to create an industrial robot. More specifically, the job of the robot was to move a cartridge in a well defined spot, requiring extreme precision and repeatability. The challenges were exciting and stimulating for the students, who proposed several interesting solutions to the Case Study and started working on the prototype for the Team Design, which will be presented on the second day.

We cannot wait for the next tasks and ingenious solutions and you?

Everything is ready and the Opening Ceremony of the Final Round of EBEC has come. 

Participants, Organizers, Companies and University representatives met yesterday at MAUTO, the car museum of Torino. 

The excitement is in the air and we can start to see the fruits of the hard work done so far: a wonderful location, every organizing team doing their job and well structured presentations, but what exactly happened during the day?

The Ceremony started with a splendid performance by the Conservatory of Turin, followed by the the greetings from Greta Gasperoni, President of BEST Politecnico di Torino, Monika Dziembowska the EBEC Coordinator, Marco Tuccio the Project Manager and Elisa Armando from the International Mobility Office of Politecnico di Torino. 

Later on, the partner companies FCA, AvioAero, ABB, Danieli, Škoda and Eaton presented themselves to the students, interspersed by a new exhibition of the Conservatory and some break to let students, organizers and companies get to know each other, take some picture in the photo area and enjoy the meals. 

BEST students proved that EBEC and the network itself is not only about working and meeting companies, as far as motivation and inspiration lead them and in the same way that they wanted to motivate and inspire the people at the event, through the speech of Enrico Risi, head of enterprise sales EMEA at Chronicle: 

“A few things we can control in our life, our goals are a part of those. Overshoot if you want to land somewhere good.”

His invitation to set high goals for our lives was only a part of his speech, which was followed by the knowledge fair, where the students had the chance to share and increase their knowledge talking with local Start ups and different realities, delighted by a wonderful musical company. 

A lot of feelings and experience already happened, but there still is a lot to come.

In conclusion, I would like to greet the readers with the definition of “compete” suggested by Risi:

“Challenge yourself and support others who are striving to be their best.”

Right now, you should know a lot of information about EBEC, the local rounds, the national rounds and  the “humans” who have been part of it, but what does the Final Round of EBEC mean from a closer look?

If we think about it, now less than 20 days are missing to the event and people from the whole network are still working on it. More than 80 students from all over Europe are dealing with exams and private life just like everyone else, but in the meanwhile they find the time to proactively organize this huge event. 

Even while I am writing this, the Media Team is managing the promotion, keeping constantly in touch with all the Local Groups, the Topic Group is testing the subjects of the competition, the FR Group is constantly communicating with the partner companies, making any possible effort to satisfy all their needs in the best possible way and all the members of BEST Turin are dealing with logistics and making sure that the Final Round of EBEC will be the most enjoyable of all times.

How is this even thinkable? How could a group of students spread over Europe gather multinational companies and 120 participants from several universities in a single, immense event while studying for exams and without even meeting in person?

The answer is easy: MOTIVATION, PROACTIVITY AND WILLINGNESS OF IMPROVING ARE OUR STRENGHTS. The history taught us that, all together, we can achieve everything and, as Filippo Di Iorio, Photographer for EBEC Final 2017 and PR Coordinator of EBEC Final 2019, said: 

“[The most important thing I learnt from EBEC is] That nothing is impossible. For example volunteers from all over Europe, organising the biggest engineering competition in the old continent. We made it possible. We are continuing to make it possible. We will make it possible forever.”

We are ready, what about you?

Do you remember about Local Rounds? (if not, you can read about them in this article and on our channels)

The winners of each Local Round of EBEC have the access to the National/Regional ones to be challenged again, try new experiences and feeling a lot of emotions.

What does it mean being part of a National/Regional Round?

For universities and companies it is a great chance to increase their own visibility, empower their brand and do some networking.
If you are an organising student, on the other hand, it is a wonderful moment to increase your skills, while amusing yourself and meeting new people and companies.
If you are a participant student, finally, it means you are representing your university at a national level, while having the opportunity of having fun, meeting new people and companies.

Of course, it is impossible not to mention the further possibility to work in a team, dealing with different ideas and a limited availability of means to solve a problem; to quote Marie Chaloupkova, who represented Y Soft Corporation during the Final Round of EBEC in 2017:

“I really liked it [the competition] because they have some kind of problem, some time to tackle it and I think that actually all them are winners because they built something, it works and even if it does not work this is what sometimes happens with technology”.

Despite these inspiring and profound words, there are winner teams, tough, and being the winner of a your own country, beside obviously going to the Final Round to represent it.
Right now, all the rounds are gone, who will be the aforementioned brilliant students and who will be the ones to win the title “Top students” in Europe for this edition?

When you hear “European engineering competition” what is first thing that pops in your mind? Some serious people with glasses, in white coats, surrounded by wires, cables, sitting behind large monitors? Or 20-something year old students, running through halls of university, carrying piles of materials or cleaning the corridors, laughing and shouting?

First Final round of EBEC was organized in 2009 by Local BEST Group Ghent, and today we want you to meet Lucien Romagnoli – founder of EBEC and it’s first coordinator. For Lucien, EBEC represents new service for engineering students in BEST universities and it brings more focus to technical aspects of engineering studies. 2009 was the first time all LBGs organised a joint pyramid of events, bringing their winners to the same place after two rounds of competition, which was never done before. This was accomplished with support of United Nations, and it was the first time we used media to build and promote the event.

“In 2008, when late night talks about the idea raised, we could have never imagined that a 10th edition would even be possible. Congratulations to all of you” says Romagnoli.

While organizing this big event, most important thing he learnt is “Run fast alone, run far together”, and that is exactly what we are doing this ten years.

You may say we’re still kids, too young and not serious enough, or that we’re not doing it right maybe. But we are doing it our way.

A long time ago, on the soil of Europe in heads of many an idea was born – to organize engineering competition. To help their friends and colleagues from technical faculties develop their skills, and use their wide theoretical knowledge they have in practice, for solving simulations of real engineering problems and to prepare better for their future jobs. From 2003 lots of Local BEST Engineering Competitions was conducted in Europe, and the first regional round was organized in Portugal, followed by Spain, Poland, and Belgium.

In 2009 National competitions were brought together, under the name of EBEC, and first Final round took place in Ghent. The rest is history.

Initially, there were four different categories of EBEC, but after a couple of years and feedback, Team Design and Case Study were instated as the official categories of the EBEC pyramid.

Years and years EBEC Project has continued to grow constantly, and nowadays it gathers more than 6500 students every year.

Soon, first NRRs will happen, and in July we’ll meet Europe’s best young engineers in Turin, and until that, local BEST groups are organizing local rounds of competition. This winter, engineers from Aachen, Saint Petersburg, Brussels, Madrid, Copenhagen, Brno, Budapest, designed their future.