SPAC is a formal dinner event that aims to bridge the gap between students and their career goals.

Students and employers, along with professionals and academics representing the field of engineering, had the opportunity to network with each other in a friendly environment. Successful professionals from the field of engineering shared their experiences to illustrate how students can prudently plan their careers in the present day and embark into their most desired professional careers. The event took place at Carleton in the Fenn Lounge, and it had three keynote speakers along with managers and engineering professionals that were sharing tables with the young engineering students. The keynote speakers were fantastic.

Overall each keynote speaker was very interesting and very inspiring but each had a common start; they too were in the similar seats that we are now, engineering students, and perhaps one of us in the future will be among the ones guiding the future engineers. There was a dinner between the second and the third speaker in which the students and the industry representatives ate and networked. After the presentation there were booths where industry and organizations set up and where students could ask questions and connect with others.

 

Battle Royale Round 3 is a LAN party full of students from Carleton University, Ottawa University and Algonquin College. The event was organized in collaboration with other students groups such as CSES, CSSS, IEEE UofO, Carleton At LAN, and IEEE from Algonquin College. The purpose of the event was to bring all the students from all three institutions together in a non-formal environment in which they play games and socialize. The event was hosted at Carleton University where approximately 80 people showed up. The competitions lasted for 24 hours, during which we hosted tournaments for a variety of PC games such as Guitar Hero, and Super Smash Bros. Prizes were given out to the best gamer / group of gamers. We hope to continue the tradition and organize the event next year.

 

One event challenges students to use the knowledge acquired in a first year programming course, and past experience to solve programming problems. The goal of the competition is to get the students to come out and solve challenging problems using either Java or C++. The competition lasts a full day in which the participants can socialize amongst each other and the organizers. During the event pizza and pop is served for all the competitors. The first three winners receive a prize and a certificate of the IEEE Computer Society for successfully demonstrating their skills.

The event was sponsored by the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University.

 

The FPGA competition allows the students taking Digital Electronics to use what they have learned and create additional modifications to a game by increasing the complexity, or adding new features. A panel of judges grade and assign a rank to each project. The top three groups received cash prizes. After the event there is a pizza and pop session by which we eat, socialize and discuss the projects. Although the event is technical and more specific to the students taking that course, it allows several lower year students to observe and give them a taste of what 3rd year entails.

 

The Paper Competition is a chance for any engineering students, that currently have a project, to present their project in front of a panel of judges. Entry can be either a team or an individual. The top three teams received cash prizes and the 1st place winner went on to compete at the regional level.

The first place went to the team made of by Emil Mitev, Felipe Ferreira, Mark Wakim, Tomas Dej. The group composed of several students from different engineering disciplines (Electrical, Computer Systems), designed a remote controlled home system. For example, a fan would be turned on or off from an iPhone by using a web interface.

The second place went to Zahirul Alam, who worked on fibre optics devices. In his own words:

     "Pulsed laser is extremely useful. Laser pulses can be powerful enough to cut, weild and trim. It can also be sharp enough to be used in delicate processes such as eye surgery. It also has enourmous applications in optical communication. I, under supervision of Dr. Jacques Albert, have worked on development of a technique which uses slanted dielectric mirror to produce such pulses using laser produced in a hair-thin fibre optic cable. This technique promises to reduce manufacturing complexity with increased reliability and life span of the device. Our device self-modifies its optical attributes to generate such pulses using a technique known as passive Q-switching."

The third place went to Mohammed Tanjir, who has designed a small robot with the hopes of participating in the RoboCup Competition.