Brandix to Sponsor SLIIT RoboFest for Three Years
SLIIT, the premier degree awarding Institute in Sri Lanka, signed an agreement with Brandix Lanka Limited for the sponsorship of the RoboFest competition at the SLIIT campus in Malabe recently. Ishan Dantanarayana, Brandix Group Chief People Officer and Professor Lalith Gamage, President/CEO of SLIIT exchanged the agreement on behalf of the two organizations. Chief Operating Officer - Strategy Division at Brandix Lanka, Surendra Karunakaran, Professor Ashok Peiris, Dean Engineering and Dr. Malitha Wijesundara, Dean Computing of SLIIT also participated in the ceremony.
According to the collaborative agreement, Brandix will be the main sponsor of the RoboFest competition for the next three years in order to provide students with the opportunity of showcasing their robot design talents.
While thanking the teams from both sides for working out this arrangement, Professor Lalith Gamage, President and CEO of SLIIT notes, “The hand extended to us by Brandix, will provide opportunities for greater number of students to engage with new technologies and familiarize themselves in the field of robotics. We would like to strengthen this collaboration and work towards not only helping students develop but also commercialize their product”.
Commenting on the future plans for SLIIT, Professor Gamage notes, “In addition to building and integrating soft skills into our curriculum, we also want to look at the research and development (R & D) aspect, since not many Higher Educational Institutes focus on this area of study. SLIIT employs the largest base of PhD holding lecturers in the country, therefore we urge each of them to pursue the line of research and start their own R & D teams among the various faculties”.
Outlining the rationale for the company’s support to this event, Brandix’s Chief People Officer Ishan Dantanarayana said: “As a Group that serves a global customer base, Brandix operates in a space where innovation is a key driver of competitive edge. We are convinced that technology will continue to transform the way products are designed, manufactured and sold. It is in this context that the Group supports initiatives and organisations that foster technological innovation and research & development. We are excited at the possibilities that can emerge from the SLIIT’s RoboFest competitions, and are delighted to support as a sponsor.”
The RoboFest competition which began in 2010, hosted by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at SLIIT, is open to school students and undergraduates island-wide. Participants may compete under their respective categories individually or as a team which may have up to five members.
At the recently concluded RoboFest 2013, winners of the School category for the best three robotic designs were Mahinda College, Galle, St. Thomas’s College, Matara, and St. Mary’s College, Kegalle. These winners walked away with Rs. 50,000, Rs. 25,000 and Rs. 10,000 for the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals respectively. Additional prizes were awarded to St. Joseph’s College, Bandarawela and Maliyadeva College, Kurunegala.
In the University category of the competition Intersect 4.0 from SLIIT, Hades from ICBT Kandy and SLASH from SLIIT emerged first, second and third, securing Rs. 65,000, Rs. 40,000 and Rs. 20,000 respectively, along with Gold, Silver and Bronze medals.
While Brandix was the main sponsor, Sri Lanka Telecom Pvt. Ltd, DBG Group, eMarketingEye(Pvt.) Ltd, Energynet Pvt. Ltd, Vallibel Power Erathna PLC, Sampath Bank Malabe branch, OREL Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Toyota Lanka Pvt. Ltd, DMS Electronics Pvt. Ltd and Sheffield Hallam University, UK joined hands as other sponsors of this event.