TIE – the best-of-Europe IEEE – EPS student event
Every year the best PCB CAD designer students from the area of the Central European Hu&Ro IEEE-EPS Chapter get together to match their skills against each other, as well as, with the rapidly developing computer aided design techniques.
The innovative Electronics Interconnection Technology Design (TIE) one day hands-on real-time competition is really an unrivalled Component Packaging and Manufacturing Technology event in Europe, the best for undergraduates in electronics. The event comprises a day of workshops and another day of competition in the organization of CETTI of Politehnica University of Bucharest, the IEEE-CPMT Romanian Student Branch and the Hu&Ro Chapters, as well as, lots of sponsors who are interested in skilled designers for the European industry.
The workshops include lectures and discussions by professionals with the intention to give students insight into the practicalities of the outside world. Not only the competitors but other industrial engineers, scientists and professors attend the workshops.
On the second day the workshops are followed by the excellent student competition. Each undergraduate student competitor has to carry out a circuit design and layout project within four hours, under high time pressure. The design requirements are defined to the student competitors just before the competition begins. Each student is provided with a computer with a suite of design software and a high definition color screen. The students are required to develop a parts library, create component footprints, create a schematic and complete a layout. The adjudication is by small teams of experienced CAD designers plus anyone else who wishes to intervene, thus having a fully transparent process.
Some 50 students (both female and male) participate in the competition and year by year they display impressive skills. The prizes to the top three are financial scholarships to support their ongoing education. All the funds are received from sponsors. IEEE-CPMT offers free student membership for the winner.
The 20th TIE will be the third opportunity for a Hungarian group of students and me to attend this unique event. In the first occasion, the 28th TIE 2009 was organized in Galati, Romania, where – in addition to the interesting workshops and the exciting competition – we enjoyed the warm hospitality of the professors and students of the Universitatea Dunarea de Jos, as well as, the nice panorama of the city along the bank of the unthinkably wide Danube. Last year, in 2010, it was our pleasure to visit the beautiful cultural capital of Transylvania, where our old friends, the team of Professor Dan Pitica from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca hosted the competition. The most popular for ever competition was completed by an interesting excursion to the exceptional salt mine of Turda.
This year we are looking forward to participating in the jubilee 20th anniversary competition of TIE in Bucharest and to meeting our best friends and colleagues from CETTI of Politehnica University of Bucharest, headed by Professor Paul Svasta, the ever enthusiastic researcher and educator in the field of electronics design and packaging technology.
Zsolt Illyefalvi-Vitéz
dr.techn (BME), CSc/PhD (MTA/BME), DHC (UPB)
Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME)
Department of Electronics Technology (ETT)
Goldman t. 3, Budapest, Hungary, 1111
E-mail: illye@ett.bme.hu Tel: +36 1 463 2753 Fax: +36 1 463-4118 www.ett.bme.hu