Shashitharan Velosamy Champions Southeast Asian Speak Out For Engineering 2017!

 

KUALA LUMPUR, 18th October –  Shashitharan Velosamy, representative of Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), successfully reigned champion in the Southeast Asian Speak Out for Engineering (SOfE) Competition 2017 with his winning speech “Road Printing Robot: A new approach to an old problem”. With five contestants competing from five different universities and three different countries, the competition took place at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya and was organized by the Institution of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE) .

SOfE is a program that inculcates habits of sharing engineering-related ideas and opinions through the medium of public speaking. Besides that, it is designed to help verbal and visual communication in explaining and breaking down technical mechanical engineering-related terminology and subjects. It is a platform to share ideas of innovation for making the world a better place and inspiring young engineers to explore their limits.

This is also related to why Mr. Shashitharan chose his title. “I got the idea after I actually damaged my car due to a pothole on the road and I pitched my idea to see how the crowd would respond to it, and so that I automatically believed that every cloud has a silver lining. Thus, I think that is what makes my speech stand out,” he said passionately.

His hopes to young engineers is for them to grow comfortable with what they do and to encourage engineering students to try and relate what they have learned to general issues and to not live in a bubble. He records feelings of gratefulness to UNITEN Debate and Oratory Society (UDOS) alongside Uniten IMechE Student Chapter in making this success a possibility for him.

The other contestants were from Universiti Teknologi Brunei, Nanyang Technology University (NTU) and National University of Singapore (NUS) from Singapore as well as Taylor’s University from Malaysia. With his recent victory, Shashitharan is now preparing for the inter-region round next year in February where he will be representing the South East Asia region for the battle of the best.

We, from NADi, would like to congratulate Shashitharan Velosamy on championing over Southeast Asian SOfE. May you continue to triumph and here’s hoping that other students will follow you in your footsteps. Best of luck for any of your future endeavors!

Written by: Siti Khairunnisa binti Amat Jalani