About the NEC
National Engineering Competition (NEC) is being launched on a pilot scale this year under the umbrella of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Careers Programme, a joint venture of PIEAS and HEC. Some other activities that are being carried out under this programme are National Science Contests in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics. These Contests, an extension of the National Physics Talent Contest that was initiated by PAEC in 1995 under the directive of the then President, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, are meant to groom the youth for the nation for participation in International Olympiad in these fields.
The main idea behind the NEC is to encourage undergraduate engineering students public in as well as private sector engineering institutions to come up with innovative solutions to problems of national interest. For this purposes a theme regarding such a problem would be circulated each year on which an interdisciplinary team of students could work under the supervision of their teachers. In addition to fourth year students, who could work on such problems in lieu of their senior year project, any undergraduate engineering student could participate in this Competition.
STEM Career Programme could provide modest funding not exceeding 10,000 rupees per team to facilitate work on this project. Each team should preferably consist of 3-4 students belonging to different departments that are relevant to the theme of the project. It would be highly desirable if each participating university/institute can assign the project to at least three teams. These teams will first compete amongst each other and the winning team from each university shall compete against winning teams from other universities at the national level. Amount of prizes for the top three projects for university level competition is 10,000 rupees, 7000 rupees and 5000 rupees.
For the national level competition the corresponding amount is 50, 000 rupees, 30,000 rupees and 20,000 rupees respectively.