Even more paper submissions than last year

For the 2010 edition of the Region 8 Student Paper Contest we received 28 papers coming from 26 Student Branches in 19 Sections:

•     Austria, Univ of Graz
•     Benelux, Technical Univ, Eindhoven
•     Benelux, Univ of Gent
•     Benelux, KU Leuven
•     Benelux, Catholique Univ of Louvain
•     Germany, Karlsruhe Univ
•     Greece, Univ of Central Greece
•     Iran, Bu Ali Sina Univ, Hamedan
•     Iran, Univ ofo Kurdistan, Sanandaj
•     Kuwait, Kuwait Univ
•     Lebanon, American Univ of Beirut
•     Lithuania, Vilnius Gediminas Tech Univ
•     Malta, Univ of Malta
•     Qatar, Qatar Univ, Doha
•     Rep. Of Macedonia, Univ of Skopje (UKIM)
•     Slovenia, Univ of Ljubljana
•     South Africa, Univ of Cape Town
•     South Africa, Univ. of Pretoria
•     South Africa, Univ of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
•     Spain, Univ Nacional De Educacion A Distancia
•     Tunisia, Ecole Nationale d’Ingenieurs de Sfax (ENIS)
•     Turkey, Suleyman Demirel Univ, Isparta
•     United Arab Emirats, Bits, Pilani-Dubai
•     UKRI, City Univ London
•     UKRI, Queen Mary, Univ of London
•     Western Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz Univ

Thanks to all the authors and Student Branches for their submissions!

Oral finals

After review of the papers the SPC international jury selected 6 papers for the oral finals that were held in Valletta, Malta, April 26, 2010, during the 15th IEEE Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference MELECON 2010.
Jury members reported that they were impressed by the quality of the slides presentations of the finalists, their respect of the timing (all within permitted 20 minutes), and their very good sometimes even very impressive answers to the jury’s questions.

The jury awarded one first prize and two second prizes to:

I prize:
Maxime Taquet: “Feature-based error processing for robust surface registration in computer assisted orthopedic surgery”, Catholique Univ Of Louvain (Jt. CAS-004/ED-015) Sb, Benelux Section

II prize ex-aequo:
-Daniel Johannes Louw, P.R.Botha, B.T.Maharaj: “A low complexity Soft-Input Soft-Output MIMO detector which combines a Sphere Decoder with a Hopfield Network”, University of Pretoria SB, South Africa Section
-Micha Linde: “A Simple Stochastic Channel Simulator for Car-to-Car Communication at 24 GHz”, Karlsruhe Univ SB, Germany Section

The other finalists were:

• Eman AlQuraishi, Reem AlTeenan: “Average Power Reduction in Compression-Based Scan Designs”,  Kuwait Univ SB, Kuwait Section;
• Hariharsudan Sivaramakrishnan Radhakrishnan: “Non-volatile and Volatile Bipolar Resistive Electrical Switching in Ag and Cu Chalcogenide Memories with a Dedicated Switching Layer”, KU Leuven SB, Benelux Section;
• Riccardo Mazzon: “Real-Time Structure from Motion for Monocular and Stereo Cameras”, Queen Mary, Univ Of London SB, UKRI Section.

2010 SPC finalists and members of the jury. From left to right: Carlos Lopez-Barrio (J), Ali El-Mousa (J), Riccardo Mazzon – UKRI, Hariharsudan S. Radhakrishnan – Benelux, George Paunovic (J), Micha Linde – Germany, Maxime Taquet – Benelux, Daniel J. Louw – South Africa, Eman AlQuraishi – Kuwait