Two final year students at MCAST's Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) placed second and third in the 2007 Science Week for the Contest for Young Scientist organised nationally by the National Student Travel Foundation (NSTF).
The two projects a 'Stabilised Pan Tilt System' developed by Paul Chircop and a 'Study of an SMT Engineering Process' by Daniela Formosa - were awarded second and third prize respectively in the contest and went on to represent Malta in an expo-science fair in Belgium, Jeunesses Scientifiques de Belgique.
A total of four MCAST students, all in the final year BTEC National Diploma in Electrical/Electronics Engineering, presented projects on different topics in the contest. This was the highest number of projects presented by students coming from a single institute.
All four innovative projects are at present exhibited at the yearly IEEE MCAST event projects exhibition being held this weekend and concluding today.
Mr Chircop's project consisted of an automated device that can be used in aerial filming. It was designed and manufactured for a small camera mount and uses a transmitter/receiver with a range of 100m radius capable of correcting the shooting positioning and orienting itself to other required angles during the shoot.
Ms Formosa developed an ideal Surface Mount Technology process including modifications and enhancements that minimised the number of defects and showed where the process was failing at various stages. The analyses studied a realistic set of data that included defects after the visual inspection of surface-mount devices (SMD) finished boards.
The two other projects presented were Karl Cardona's 'Electric Incubators' and Reuben Borg's 'Ultrasonic Monitor'.
Mr Cardona applied engineering concepts to help in time-saving and manual monitoring in the poultry breeding business. His electric incubator was designed, developed and manufactured to monitor the poultry-hatching period. It incorporated all important incubator and poultry hatching monitoring features that are not always present in the commercial incubators.
Mr Borg developed a handheld, portable and lightweight device that uses a sensor to detect the level of ultrasonic frequencies in the air surrounding us and displayed them on an LED bar graph. Moreover, through slight modifications, the unit could be set to control other equipment at a particular level of ultrasonic detection; for example, it could be programmed to turn off the electricity supply if a continuous spark is detected inside an electrical distribution board. The device was built cheaply using very basic analogue electronic components.
All the IEEE's academic and non-academic staff were very helpful and supportive to the students. Thanks are due to Ing. Brian Azzopardi who did his utmost to support these students as a mentor for these projects. He is a former participant in the NSTF contest and in the ninth Young European Environmental Research contest held in Berlin.