The Tamil Engineering Foundation (TEF), which is also called as Engineering Charity Fund Australia, donated 50 drawing boxes to the students of the Faculty of Engineering. This was donated on 12th December 2017. The TEF was donating the drawing boxes to the students in the past also. This was given as facility to the students to process their education without any difficulties. Always when the faculty take additional students, it was supported by the TEF and Engineering graduates with building up the positive capacity of the Engineering Student Union (ESU). As a result the ESU manage the drawing box distribution with the help of the Senior Treasurer Dr. B. Ketheesan. It is also another level of managerial capacity building to the students as they have been provided the capital. They have to look after the recurrent expenditure on repairing and replacement of these components, when they got damaged. This has been continued from the birth of the Faculty of Engineering and working excellently as services to the students. The faculty and the students are sincerely thanking the TEF for their support on donation of these 50 drawing boxes with the cost of 280,800 SLR. With this donation the ESU has the capital total of 125 drawing boxes. This donation and event was coordinated by Dr. B. Ketheesan and Ms. Hamshie Krishnarajah from the Faculty of Engineering.
Bachelor of Education in Engineering Technology program is initiated in collaboration with the National Institute of Education
Engineering Technology stream is newly introduced to GCE Advanced level and most teachers are unaware of subjects and its contents. Therefore, main objective of this B.Ed. in Engineering Technology program is to empower the teaching skills and knowledge of teachers who teach Engineering Technology at GCE Advance level. This program has been prepared and approved by National Institute of Education. The Director of NIE has requested the Faculty of Engineering, University of Jaffna only to deliver lectures for teachers.
This program includes 19 modules from different engineering disciplines such as: (1) Engineering Mathematics 1, (2) Electrical Technology, (3) Engineering Drawing, (4) Workshop technology, (5) Principal of Electronics, (6) Surveying, (7) Engineering Mathematics 2, (8) Applied Thermodynamics, (9) Strength of Materials, (10) Fluid Mechanics, (11) Engineering Mechanics, (12) Digital Electronics, (13) Construction technology 1, (14) Automobile Technology, (15) Electrical Machines and Drives, (16) QS Practice, (!7) Manufacturing Technology, (18) Construction technology 2 and (19) Energy and Waste Management. This program has been decided to be conducted in weekends from 8.30 AM to 4.30 PM and the duration of this program is 18 months. This program started on 10th December 2017. The personals who are conducting / assisting this program comprises of Professors, Senior Lecturers, Lecturers and instructors.
Mr. N.T.K. Lokuliyana, Director, Department of Technology, National Institute of Education (NIE) has initiated this excellent program through the Faculty of Engineering to upgrade the qualification and to provide necessary knowledge and skills for the teachers who teach Engineering Technology at GCE Advanced level. Further all the expenses of this program is funded by National Institute of Education at Maharagama, Sri Lanka. The whole program initiation and conduction is coordinated by Dr. B. Janarthanan from the Faculty of Engineering. This is one of the excellent services from the Faculty of Engineering to this region.
Completion of first phase of the “Waste for life” project
The project “Waste for Life” focused on generating poverty reducing solutions for a serious environmental issue in the country, the waste problem. This study achieved environmental sustainability by reducing the waste in the environment and, socio-economic sustainability by improving the livelihood of marginalized people in the community who work with waste.
Key aspects of this project are;
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Current waste management system in the country and the role of the informal sector in waste management was identified.
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Assessed the socio-economic, environmental and technical feasibility of a Waste for Life project in Sri Lanka.
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Key stakeholders, the needs of the community and social impact of the project were identified.
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Socio-economic and environmental sustainability of the project was found out and a small scale pilot project was implemented.
This project was an initiate in developing poverty reducing solutions through an innovative waste management approach for marginalized sectors in the community such as small scale recyclers, waste collectors and community based organizations who work on waste management.
For the past few decades the waste management in Sri Lanka has being primarily focusing on the environment. This project took a different approach and made an effort to include the marginalized sectors who work with waste into the system.
WASTE FOR LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF JAFFNA, KILINOCHCHI.
I joined as a Research Assistant for this project from July 2016 to Present. My role in this project is developing a composite materials from waste plastic and natural waste (Banana fiber, fabric waste and paddy husk). And we develop some simple domestic and building materials from those materials such as notebook covers and roof sheets.
UBLC-Engineering Coordinator attended WIPO workshop
Mr. Valluvan, Coordinator of the University Business Linkage Cell (Engineering), attended to the five days’ World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) workshop on Intellectual Property and Patent writing. Dean also attended to first day inauguration session of the workshop. This is mainly to motivate the research outcome of the Universities to be converted as useful product to the society and industries. This was organized by Coordinating Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Science and Technology. This workshop was conducted from 30th November till 3rd December 2017 at Kingsbury hotel in Colombo with resource persons from American leading Universities and WIPO office.
Collaborative discussion with the IRDG
The Institute of Regional Development and Governance (IRDG) – headed by Mr. Sivagurunathan Rangarajah, Former Chief Secretary of the North-East Provincial Council in Sri Lanka, visited together with Mr. Naga Narendran to the Faculty of Engineering on 2nd December 2017. This was to discuss with all three deans of the Engineering, Agriculture and Technology Faculties. During this meeting, possible community outreach programs were discuss as fruitful future events. Finally it was decided to initiate simple collaborations while drafting an MOU for solid and sustainable collaborations. This discussion was coordinated by Mr. M. Vignarajah of the Faculty of Engineering.
Talk on “bridge, tunnel and civil infrastructure design and construction in the UK and Spain,” by Eng. Sakthy Selvakumaran
Ms Sakthy is a Chartered Civil Engineer and has been named on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for Europe, and on a list of 30 under 30 for Manufacturing & Engineering by the UK Government Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
In this talk, Ms Sakthy will deliver a talk on bridge, tunnel and civil infrastructure design and construction in the UK and Spain and will share her views on career path for engineering students.
Sakthy graduated from Cambridge University with a Masters in Engineering in 2010 and has since worked as a civil and structural engineer in design consultancy and contracting applications across multiple roles, continents and cultures (including Spain, Peru and the UK). Significant projects include the design and construction of ExCeL Bridge as part of Crossrail (London), the design, inspection, and assessment of various rail and highway bridges and tunnels, and work on earthquake resistant housing and landslide mitigation measures. In 2013 she joined Laing O’Rourke as an Innovation Engineer, working on developing new design solutions and technologies to change the way infrastructure is designed, constructed and maintained. She re-joined Cambridge in 2015 to undertake a PhD in Engineering, researching risk and resilience of infrastructure through remote measurement and monitoring of assets using radar satellites, and is a supervisor for undergraduate 1A Structures.
MoU BETWEEN UNIVERSITY OF JAFFNA FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND PROF. MAHALINGAM MEMORIAL FUND FOR GOLD MEDAL AND OTHER AWARDS
Memorandum of understanding between university of Jaffna Faculty of Engineering and Professor Mahalingam memorial fund for gold medal and other awards was signed on 30th November 2017. Vice Chancellor and Ms. Sakthy Selvakumaran (Niece of Late Prof. Mahalingam), the representative of donor signed the memorandum. The memorandum includes Prof. S. Mahalingam memorial gold medal for the best overall performance in Mechanical and Process Engineering. The gold medal will be given away at the general convocation of University of Jaffna. Award for innovative project proposal and Studentship for the financially disadvantaged students, which have been already in progress also included under the MoU. More details about them can be found https://www.eng.jfn.ac.lk/studentships/
CPD program for Technical Officers
All the technical officers of the Faculty of Engineering were given one full day training on few specific equipment with the support of the suppliers. This training program was coordinated by the Assistant Registrar Engineering together with the Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. This program was also open to the laboratory attendant of the Faculty. After having a full day of sessions, to evaluate the learning level, a written examination was conducted by the Assistant Registrar together with the Industry experts, who were the resource persons of the training program. This examination was conducted on 28th November 2017. All the technical officers participated to this examination too. Based on their performance, a “participant certificate” or “successfully completed certificate” were given to the participants.
Students’ field trip – coastal engineering
The students of E15 batch, who offer the BSc. Eng course majoring in Civil and Environmental Engineering, are required to cover few hours of visit to the field. They had recently gone to the beach of Mullaitivu, Trincomalee and Mannar to view the morphology of the beach, wave propagation and to learn beach profiling, in November, 2017. They will embark on a trip around Sri Lanka, visiting different beach morphology and coastal structures and conduct beach profiling and sediment analysis as part of the curriculum, towards the end of the semester.
Staff presented their research at the National Energy Symposium
The five mechanical engineering students, S. Nidershan, W.A. Dinusha, B.G.D.H. Bopitiya, R. Neethan and N.G.W.M. Asiri Roshan Bandara Wijethilaka along with staff members Ms. H. Krishnarajah and Ms. R. Ramachandran attended the National Energy Symposium of Sustainable Energy Authority held on 19th November 2017 at BMICH, Colombo. They presented their research works on the title “Design of a control system to optimize power consumption in air conditioners to satisfy human thermal comfort – Stereo Vision Approach” and “Assessment of Performance and Development of Biomass Fired Cabinet Dryers for Improved Energy Efficiency” this conference. These research works are based on their study from undergraduate at Faculty of Engineering, University of Jaffna.