Colombo, Monday 17th July 2017: The Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT), a pioneer in providing British higher education in Information Technology and Business in Sri Lanka, recently held its annual Cutting Edge Exhibition at BMICH.
IIT students displayed innovative projects at Cutting Edge 2017 which was themed “Internet of Things and Entrepreneurship.” This year’s exhibition included over 70 IT and Business related projects which were developed by the institute’s Software Engineering, Computer Science and Business Information Systems (BIS) undergraduates.
In previous years many of the winners of Cutting Edge have gone on to represent renowned local and international competitions such as NBQSA, mBillionth, e-Swabhimani, Microsoft Imagine Cup, APICTA etc.
“IIT is a pioneer in providing renowned British higher education in Sri Lanka for the past 27 years. The Cutting Edge exhibition has been a significant part of IIT for several years and this exhibition provides an ideal platform for our IT and Business undergraduates to showcase their innovative projects. Through their projects they have the ability to transform the future through innovation and to help empower society. Many of these students have designed or created products or mobile apps. Cutting Edge provides an opportunity for IIT students to be recognized by the industry and corporates for their ideas and projects that inspire innovation,” Chairman of Informatics Group and IIT – Dr. Gamini Wickramasinghe commenting on this annual exhibition said.
“Cutting Edge gave me the opportunity to showcase my project to many industry experts and professionals. I got a lot of valuable feedback and recommendations and it also opened doors to take my project to the next level. The enthusiasm showed by the experts truly motivated me to work on my project idea further. Therefore, as an innovator I feel that the connections I made and the exposure I got through this exhibition is indeed a great step forward,” Malith Senanayake who is an IIT student that showcased his innovation at this year’s Cutting Edge said.
Senanayake explained that the objective of his project ‘Green-Pay’ was to develop a business framework and formulate an information system (IT) solution that will aid in reducing the adverse effects of rising peak electricity demand in Sri Lanka through integrating and commercializing Electric Vehicle (EV) and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technologies, while utilizing the batteries of the EVs as a storage mechanism to support the electricity grid of Sri Lanka.
Seventeen year old Ihan Dilnath Lelwala, currently following the Foundation Programme leading to the University of Westminster BEng(Hons) Software Engineering degree at IIT, developed the concept for an online e-commerce website and mobile app that brings personalized restaurant deals and discount promotions for food enthusiasts.
“Being the youngest participant of Cutting Edge, it gave me the opportunity to showcase my project to industry experts from reputed IT companies and the general public who were really impressed, and gave me important feedback and valuable insight to the further development of my project”, he said.
Ashfaq Ahmed who is a student following the Software Engineering degree at IIT said that Cutting Edge is a great opportunity for students to showcase their project. Ashfaq is the team leader for “Team Semi Colon” which won the first place under the Software Engineering and BIS category for their project “Tillow” which is a talking pillow. This smart pillow consists of a voice integrated Artificial Intelligence (AI) that also includes attractive features such as telephone calling, Mp3, time, alarms, reminders and calendar events. Anjana Supun, Andrea Perera, Dillon Paulusz and Heshmanthi Fernando along with Ashfaq were the brains behind this latest innovation.