The E-Forum 2018 is an initiative taken by the Electronic Club, the official student body of the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering of University of Moratuwa was held on 29th of January 2018 at the BMICH for the 5th consecutive time. It is considered as the premier event of Department calendar where academia and the industry get the opportunity to interact with each other. The theme was to propel the national economy with electronics niche areas such as Semiconductor IP core and EDA tool chain development, Robotics and automation and Software hardware co-design. In brief the event was organized to provide a platform for all the three sectors, the industry, the academia and the future graduates of the department to involve in a lively conversation aimed towards a friendlier collaboration with each other in the future to come.
The event was honoured with the presence of Chancellor, Prof. K.K.Y.W.Perera, Vice Chancellor, Prof. K.K.C.K. Perera and Dean of Faculty of Engineering, Prof N. Wickramarachchi.
Prof. Rohan Munasinghe, the Head of the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering addressed the gathering about the Department and rise and decline of the telecommunication industry.
Launching the 2018 edition of the “e-Carrier” magazine was one of the key events in the Agenda of E-Forum 2018. It is the official annual publication of the E-Club and is much awaited every year. It is the testimonial of the knowledge imparted at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering and it has secured its place as a leading publication showcasing the technological advancement made in the department.
This night showcased the presentations of some of the most brilliant final year projects of students of the department. These were up to international standards and they give solutions to some sensitive and important problems in the country. This was a platform for the undergraduates to showcase their best final year projects which manifest the level of cutting edge technology used by our students to the wider community
The first presentation was about Software Defined Networking (SDN) Switch for Core Networks. This project has delivered the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation of a SDN switch which is capable of meeting 15G throughput which can be scaled up to 100G.
Next project was a LORAWAN based wearable device, which is in the form of a smart shoe with a fitness tracking application powered by electromagnetic energy harvesting.
The highlight of the evening was the project Scalable Autonomous Agronomical Smart Bot (SAASbot), which handled all the tasks related to farming with the use of automation. This system is a mobile scalable platform for personal to medium scale farming which provide a better user experience with a mobile application for controlling and facilitating 24/7 supervision.
Other projects presented in the evening were, Kinect based gait analysis system, Diabetes related foot ulcer detection, Early detection of diabetes using tortuosity measurement of blood vessels in the sclera. The last three projects have a medical importance in addition to the technological innovation. All these projects demonstrated the technological capability and innovation of department students.
The most awaited session of the evening was the panel discussion that was moderated by Dr. Tharaka Samarasinghe. The theme of the discussion was “Value addition in electronic and telecommunication industry – Strategies for globally competitive products and services development”. Each panelist was invited to give their opinions on how value addition is being applied in their businesses and institutions.
Prof Ajith De Alwis explained the plan of the government to increase the research done in Sri Lanka, by allocating more grants and establishing new institutions for new technologies. As he said, to bring value addition to products, research is needed to be done to gain a competitive technological advantage.
Dr. Harsha Subasinghe, the CEO of CodeGen gave some valuable insights regarding the topic of discussion. He also highlighted the importance of understanding the fundamentals when implementing a certain technology. This facilitate an efficient and clean implementation of that technology. He presented this idea taking into example the machine learning work that is being done at CodeGen. He also suggested that our technological innovations should be closer to the society, by solving our everyday problems.
Dr. Sankalpa Gamwarige next presented, some of the interesting things done at Zone 24x7. Their main income comes from providing solutions for retail stores. As he explained they maintain their competitive advantage by doing research on new conceptual designs and suggesting them to customers so that it will expand their businesses.
Mr. Indika Walpitage, who is the Vice President - Network Operations & Service Assurance at Dialog Axiata PLC talked about some of the new trends in the telecommunication industry by referring to business developments of Dialog Axiata. What he emphasized was a telecommunication company can no longer remain on top just focusing on voice or SMS. As he said they must provide more and more services that will make a customer’s life easy.
Dr. Ajith Pasquel, who is the CEO of Paraqum Technologies (Private) Limited and a department lecturer also presented many interesting ideas to the discussion. He also talked about how developing a brand matters when taking your business to the world
The Tokens of appreciation were awarded to the Panelists by the Chief Guest, Chancellor Prof.K.K.Y.W.Perera.
Each year, the prestigious LSS Award is awarded to the most outstanding ENTC graduate in leadership, scholarship and service. Exemplary character, responsible leadership, service in university or community life, superior scholarship and intelligence, genuine fellowship and loyalty to democratic ideals are accounted as qualifications for LSS award. The award winners will belong to the 'LSS Honor Society' whose membership will be a mark of highest distinction. Mr. Tharindu Kaluarachchi and Ms. Hasantha Malavipathirana were the proud winners of the LSS Award for the year 2016 and 2017 respectively.
The event came to an end with the vote of thanks by Mr. Kasun Sanjaya Madhuranga, the Secretary of E-Club
This event will not be successful to this extent, if not for the support of our partners. Synopsys, the Gold Partner, Millennium Information Technologies, E carrier 2018 Partner and Zone 24/7, the Co-Sponsor gave us their financial support to maintain the standards and the core values of E-Forum which is recognized as the prime annual event of ENTC focusing on enhancing industry interactions of the undergraduates and the academics.
