Every now and again, a time comes when you get validation for all your efforts: You’ve studied hard, you get an admit from Stanford. You crunch the numbers right, you get paid big on the market.

I got that validation for my B.E. Project last week. After working on it for over a year and a half, I have finally got recognized for my efforts.

DJ Nirmiti, a festival of the Indian Society of Manufacturing Engineers (ISME), organized a project competition for students across the city of Mumbai. A total of 63 projects participated from various fields of mechanical and production engineering. On day 1, we were required to present to a jury panel, which would decide the top 10 for day 2. On day 2, Mr. M. J. Palaje, ex-CEO at Larsen & Toubro, was the honorary judge for the top 10 projects.

The competition provided some excellent take-aways. We received advice on how to improve our presentation on day 1 by the Head of Department for Mechanical Engineering at K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering. He also provided feedback how to shore up some holes in the defense of the project.

On the second day, we presented our project to Mr. Palaje. After the conclusion of the presentation, his first remark was:

You have conducted some excellent research work.

This made us really happy. At the end of the competition, we awarded the best project in Mechanical Engineering by the honorary president of ISME, Dr. Hari Vasudevan.

This, I felt, was the perfect way to have a sense of validation for the efforts we have put in. Further more, this abstract of this study got accepted at the IMECE 2018 conference, organized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). We hope to submit a great paper, which will cap off this project in the best way possible.