Design competition aims to encourage creativity, originality and commonsense in highly complex projects

The final phase of the European edition of the 13th International Student Competition ‘Digilent Design Contest’ was held on May 13-14, 2017, at National Instruments Romania office, in Cluj-Napoca. The competition was organized jointly by the companies Digilent Inc. (Pullman, WA, USA), Digilent RO (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) and the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Department of Applied Electronics. The competition aims to encourage creativity, originality and commonsense to students, their mobilization in the implementation of projects of high complexity. Students enrolled receive free hardware platforms (FPGA systems) and develop their own projects, to present in the final stage (oral, practical demonstration and documentation). Twenty-five teams represented universities in Romania (Cluj, Brasov, Timisoara, Targu Mures, Bucharest, Constanta) and abroad (Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Serbia) The jury was composed of representatives of the organizing companies, teachers from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, industry members. Most projects have shown a high degree of complexity, demonstrated imagination, knowledge and communication skills of the authors. Juries have had a difficult task in ranking the best projects. Prof. Radu Muntean, the former President of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, presented the Winners Certificates and the representatives of the organizing companies handled the awards.