Engineering students urged to showcase innovations in 10th SWEEP Awards

Students and faculty from engineering schools nationwide under the Smart Wireless Engineering and Education Program (SWEEP) will once again have the chance to showcase their innovations in the 10th SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards.

Organized by Smart Communications Inc. (Smart), SWEEP Awards will have for its theme this year, “Transforming Lives through Technology”, highlighting the need for more trail-blazing applications and devices that harness the power of mobile technologies to make lives of Filipinos better.

“Smart is always on the lookout for ‘disruptive’ innovations developed by students from our partner engineering schools. With this program, Smart hopes to promote the culture of innovation and excellence among the students,” said Ramon Isberto, Smart Public Affairs Group head.

Smart encourages the development of end-to-end mobile applications or solutions using Smart’s platform of products and suite of services to address problems, issues or needs of communities or industries.

Winners will get cash prizes of as much as P500,000, including their schools, which will also receive the equivalent amount in the form of a grant.

Apart from the cash prizes, entries to this year’s SWEEP Awards will automatically qualify to the IdeaSpace competition. Those who wish to join the SWEEP Awards must accomplish IdeaSpace forms, which are also available on the SWEEP website, www.smartsweep.ph.

The IdeaSpace Foundation, the incubator arm of the First Pacific group of companies, will be holding the IdeaSpace competition for the second year as part of its commitment to support technology entrepreneurship in the Philippines.

With IdeaSpace, teams behind the SWEEP entries will have a chance to transform their prototypes into viable technology start-ups.