With enthusiastic spirit and lots of energy, this Friday 30th September was started Challenge 10, as part of the programmed activities for TechnoCamp 2016. The chosen youths were convened at 9:00 a. m. at the facilities of our scientific-technological university park, where they would develop the dynamic’s diverse activities during the day, concluding at 7:00 p. m.

PhD Inés Vega López and MSc Rogelio Prieto Alvarado gave the inaugural welcome to participants, both of them were juries of the competence and are current collaborators at the Technological Innovation Park (PIT) belonging to the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS). Vega López wished success to all of the selected ones gathered at Training Room and invited them to take interest in PIT-UAS, an open space for youths to strengthen their scientific vocations. For his part, Prieto Alvarado classified this kind of events as an «incentive so their interest [youths’] remain and can be boosted».

It was told to technocampers that they would have 10 hours to live the experience of facing the not so easy challenge of strategizing a scientific-technological solution for problems pre-established by organizers, based on real entrepreneurial an social necessities. For these potential future researchers, Challenge 10 represents an open door to inspiration, which invites them to enquire into ways of solving social problems through scientific-technological innovation, as well as being part —over the next years— of research and development centres as the PIT-UAS itself.

Since the beginning of the event, an atmosphere of camaraderie was breathed among all the participants, each of which was chosen by the following criteria: being high school or university students, have competed in knowledge olympiads or prototypes contests and have been subscribed by means of the online application for TechnoCamp. Those who had these qualifications were candidates for being randomly selected, any of them could take one of the 16 available posts in the competition (although, given the great attendance to TechnoCamp, this number of posts had to be increased to 19).

Many of these students talked with us about their motivations to approach to science, some of them begun with curiosity to go towards physics or mathematics since an early age, they saw it as a way to obtain answers to their unanswered questions about the world; others started going in depth into hard sciences through their participation in academic contests or thanks to testimonies given by people involved in these study fields. All the tecnocampers, even though their stories are different, have common vision: do their bit, contributing to change and to improve the world through their knowledge. By counselling and support, the event has the objective of helping them to accomplish this shared dream.

Challenge 10 dynamic consisted of dividing the 19 participants in four teams, each of which would solve a specific problem through the elaboration a project proposal including the plan of a prototype. The problems to be treated belonged to fields like precision agriculture, renewable energies and sustainability, mobility and transportation, besides public security. Each of these proposals would contribute to the resolution and improvement within the assigned area; the winner team will have the opportunity of realising its project’s prototype within the PIT-UAS’ facilities, with its researchers and professionals’ specialised guidance, supplemented by institutional financing support.

As part of the counselling, each team passed by the Park’s distinct workshops and laboratories, where was given to them an outlook of what this university organizational unit is capable of doing in the matter of robotics, bioinformatics, physics, renewable energies, software development, automation, 3D printing and other industries of the future that are worked on within the facilities, thanks to material and human resources that the PIT-UAS has. Technocampers could lay out specific questions regarding to the problem they were told to resolve, doubts that were answered by people in charge of the visited areas.

In this way, the 19 youths joined the synergy each day is carried out at our facilities, where coincide different knowledge areas in search of resolving social problems. The duration in each laboratory was of about thirty minutes, so this part of the event lasted a little bit more than two hours. Afterwards, the contestants had a break for lunch, socialising and getting to know each other better, in this pleasant and innovator space, surrounded by scientific-technological prototypes and highly specialised machinery than in the future might become their quotidian scene.

Finally, the participants delivered their projects to the jury. Evaluators members analysed, one by one, the projects, taking into account as evaluation parameters technical and financial feasibility of the proposal, grade of innovation it represented, economic, social, environmental and scientific impact, multidisciplinarity and the realisation time it would take. After a little more than an hour and a half of deliberation, following the intense research and learning day lived by the participants, the juries selected one proposal as the winner.

The evaluating jury was conformed of PhD Ildefonso Léon Monzón (full-time principal professor-researcher C at UAS’ Physic-Mathematics Sciences Faculty and responsible of PIT-UAS’ Electronics Instrumentation and Radiation Detectors Laboratory), PhD Bianca Amézquita López (principal professor-researcher B at UAS’ Chemical-Biological Sciences), PhD Inés Vega López (responsible of PIT-UAS’ Bioinformatics Laboratory), PhD Carlos Duarte Galván (professor-researcher at UAS’ Physic-Mathematics Sciences Faculty) and MSc Rogelio Prieto Alvarado (PIT-UAS’ operative coordinator).

Thus, during the closing ceremony, that took place at Smart Eco-Park, the Seeds-Flux Sensor for Traditional Sowings to Obtain Greater Precision in Agricultural Consumables Distribution. First place winners were received with huge ballyhoo: Emmanuel Guillermo Rojas Márquez and José Francisco Espinoza Soto (UAS’ Physic-Mathematics Sciences Faculty), Martín Darel Lugo Leyva (UAS’ Biology School), Norma Guadalupe Rodríguez Aguilar (Jean Piaget del Río Institute) and Héctor Omar Salazar Obeso (UAS’ Dr. Salvador Allende pre-university academic unit). It was particularly moving to see these five technocampers gathering in a group embrace when they were declared winners, celebrating like this the recognition to their efforts and the obtained opportunity, fruit of their perseverance and interest in matters of science, technology and innovation.

In the words of PIT-UAS’ general director: «It is noticeable that Sinaloense youths are made for challenges. They know what they want». The MBA José Ramón López Arellano emphasised that the presented projects are of good quality and that there is the intention of giving them follow-up, in order ti support these youths with scientific vocation. «[We want] to take them in hand so they can have a boost and an impact in Sinaloa and the region, so they can improve the life quality of all of us, who live here», he declared. He also claimed that there is some thinking being done to plan TechnoCamp 2.0.

Finally, the general director thanked and congratulated all the youths, by their eagerness and dedication, not just over the ten hours of this ludic scientific day, but along their academic career. The event finished awarding the diplomas and prizes; subsequently, there was a final picture, taken when the talented youths, the juries and PIT-UAS’ personnel in unison gaily shouted: «TechnoCamp!».

Written by Doris Salazar (Communication and Diffusion, PIT-UAS), Translated by Belem Ruiz (Edition and Communication, PIT-UAS).