‘Engineers of tomorrow’ vie for Gasna honours

Prof Abdelwahab Aroussi

Winners of the Gasna Competition 2013 organised by Qatar University’s Gas Processing Centre (GPC) were announced at its closing ceremony last week.   The annual competition is an effort to increase the awareness among primary and high school students of the importance of gas for the country’s development, and to attract more students to study science and engineering.  

In his opening remarks, GPC director Prof Abdelwahab Aroussi said: “Gasna is about building a future engaging our young people to get excited about science and engineering, which are the powerhouses of Qatar’s economy. The young people here today are our future leaders. We need them to have the skills to be able to look after our resources for tomorrow.”

The ceremony included a lively demonstration by pupils from the Hamad bin Abdullah bin Jassim Independent Secondary School for Boys on a novel way of showing the use of polymers, by “cooking” the filling of milky way bars.

This year’s competition was sponsored by Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Shell, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, QAPCO, Dolphin Energy, Oryx GTL and Qatar Gas. The ceremony was attended by university faculty members and staff from the GPC, industry experts, teachers and pupils from schools across Doha.

This year’s competition drew in 50 schools which registered, with 38 schools submitting 50 projects.

This year two extra age categories were introduced to enable students to compete with those of a similar age. The breakdown of projects by category was Category 1 (KG 1 and KG 2) – 2; Category 2 (yr1-yr3) – 6; Category 3 (yr4-yr6) – 11; Category 4 (yr7-9) – 14 and Category 5 (yr 10-12) – 17.  The Gasna team undertook 19 visits to schools during December-February, including four visits by Shell and QatarGas experts, to share knowledge and support the schools in their research projects.

Special awards highlighting key projects were  Best Demonstration Model - Ibn Khaldoon Preparatory Independent School for Boys; Best Offshore Application - Ahmed bin Hanbal Secondary School for Boys; Best Presentation in Judging Day - Abu Obaida Preparatory School for Boys; Best Research Project for a Primary Pupil - Safeya bint Abdulmutaleb Independent School for Girls; and Sustainability Award - Al Zubara School for Boys.

BELOW: Students showing the experiment of milky way bars.