ECO-Innovators is a competition held to present the most interesting students’ initiatives in the area of broadly understood power engineering and environmental protection for university students representing research groups and other students’ organisations. This year the competition was held virtually.

The participants in the first stage had to submit an application in the form of a short description of their research group and its activities, accomplishments and original projects. The jury selected 15 research groups that qualified for the second stage. One of them was the Power Engineers Research Group (PERG) at the Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering.

In the second stage our students had to listen to 10 webinars and perform specific tasks based on them. The presentations touched upon such issues as submitting patent applications, thermal and power measurements, air pollutants and the social and environmental responsibility of the research group. As Paulina Kucharczyk from the PERG board remembers, the entire team worked with great commitment, often working on tasks until late at night. The hard work paid off as at this stage the WUT representatives scored as many as 96.5 out of 100 points, became No. 1 in the ranking list and won their entry ticket to the finals.

During their 5-minute presentation, the PERG team represented by Oskar Bieńko had to present their eco-innovative projects and their own accomplishments, including publications, patents and competitions they had participated in. The presentation of their popularisation activities was equally important. 

Regarding their projects, the WUT students boasted their participation in the Great Challenge competition held by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) and a portable power storage unit. They talked about their participation in events such as the Science Picnic held by the Copernicus Science Centre and highlighted their social activities. The presentation also included information about the participation in the Polish National Young Power Engineers Conference, the award of the rector’s grants and victories in the PGE Group’s Hackathon competition and in the National Power Engineering Competition.

Check out the progress of works carried out by the PERG at the WUT on the project for the NCBR’s Great Challenge competition.

The PERG team did not forget about their plans for the future, including the participation in various events such as the Seagulls competition held by the University of Szczecin and "How figital can decarbonize non-digital" competition held by Atos IT Consulting, to name just a few.

The team from the WUT was recognised by the jury as the best. One of the awards for the students was an invitation to participate in the international scientific conference: International Conference on the Clean Environment and Energy Research (CEER2020).