IEEE Young Professionals Bangladesh is organizing an idea contest that leverages the technical skills of IEEE YP members and promotes humanitarian activities by seeking ideas to minimize the socio-economic impacts after COVID-19 sponsored by IEEE Young Professionals.

Eligibility:

Any IEEE Young Professionals members and student members from the IEEE Bangladesh Section can participate in the contest. Participants must form a team to take part in the contest consisting of a maximum of 4 members including at least a Young Professional member. Every team will be recognized by its team name. A mentor must be included in every team that should be an IEEE member (graduate student or above).

Overview of competition:

There will be a talk on “How to transform an idea into a product” on the day of idea presentation followed by a panel discussion including the entrepreneur, industrialist, business analyst, engineer, doctor, academician, etc. All the teams will be allowed to participate in the session.

The idea contest will be comprised of 2 rounds

1. In the preliminary round, teams will submit their ideas in brief at the time of registration. The evaluators will select the top 5 ideas based on the impacts and sustainable solutions addressing the problems. The name of the qualified 5 teams of the preliminary round will be announced on August 17, 2020.
2. In the final round, the top 5 teams will present their ideas before judges via the Web Meeting Platform. They will get 10 minutes for the presentation. Judges will ask questions after the presentation.

Competition rules:

1. The idea should convey ways to mitigate the post-COVID impact for low and middle-income countries.
2. The idea should be unique and usable to society.
3. The idea can be technical or non-technical but should be aligned to achieve any of the goals of SDG.

General rules:

1. Any executive committee members of IEEE Young Professionals Bangladesh and IEEE Bangladesh Section will not act as an evaluator of the preliminary round or as a judge of the final round. The evaluators and judges of the contest can be a local or global person.
2. A team can be disqualified for the following reasons:

(a) Proof of falsification of the IEEE membership status

(b) Record of any kind of misbehavior with any competitors, committee      members, evaluators or judges.

3. The decisions made by evaluators and judges will be final. No appeal will be considered.

N.B. : Rules of competition may be changed any time by the organizing committee and it will be pre-notified.

Special cases:

Competition committee can modify any rules as long as they are published prior to the event and the rules will be followed throughout the event.

Announcement of winners:

The name of winning teams and the ranking list will be announced on August 22, 2020. Top five solutions based on their technical, social, and financial impacts on society selected by the judging panel will get recognition and the best idea will receive a grant worth $500 for the incubation of their idea, for the development of their prototypes, and remaining teams will get advice for obtaining funds.

Agreement to official rules:

By taking part in the competition, each team agrees to follow the terms and conditions made by the Organizing Committee.

Every idea should have a title and written in the IEEE conference format in less than 2 pages with the figures. There should be an abstract of fewer than 100 words, introduction, problem statement, proposed solution, future outlook, and reference.

All ideas must be original and write-ups should be unique and unpublished work. The works will be checked for plagiarism and plagiarized ideas will be disqualified for participation in the final stage.

The contest aims to promote practical, cost-effective, and innovative solutions for developing countries to manage the economical, social, and psychological well-being of people. This contest will provide life-saving technological or non-technological methods that can be implemented in both urban and rural areas.

The Evaluators and judges will not be the same person for the sake of the participants’ multi-disciplinary ideas. Impacts on society will be the major factor to categorize the ideas. Moreover, idea design and usability, simplicity, cost-effectiveness, originality will play a vital role to evaluate the ideas to measure its impacts to fight against the pandemic at this post-COVID condition.