GENERAL 

The Student Paper Contest (SPC) is one of the main technical activities in Region 8. It was  established in 1967 and since then it is an excellent occasion for personal leadership and  involvement of student members in a prospective IEEE scientific/technical activity and to  increase the visibility of the student branch. It also makes possible further promotion of IEEE among students. The success of the SPC relies heavily on the input from the Student Branch Officers, especially  the Student Branch Counselor and the Student Branch Chair, but also on academic members  especially those who form part of the local IEEE section. 

Once every year, each IEEE R8 Student Branch (SB) may hold and organize a local Student Paper  Contest under its own responsibility. The organization of a local SPC generally means that  contest should be announced publicly in advance and that all submitted papers are to be locally  reviewed by qualified specialists. Additionally, all R8/Sections/Chapters IEEE Conferences,  having student papers sessions included in their programs, could and should also be used to get  additional proposals for SPC. As long as a SB is formally supporting and accepting any type of a  student papers contest activity, it is in line with the existing SPC rules. Student Branch  Counselors should be fully involved in all local SPC activities, as well as all other local IEEE  officers (Section Chairs, Chapter Chairs, student activities officers, members of executive  committees…). 

The winner(s) of each local Student Branch Contest may compete for the Region 8 Contest. A  Student Branch may submit one paper per every 100 Student Branch members or part thereof,  with a maximum of three papers per SB. At the same time, especially in small branches where the managing of a local contest is difficult, the IEEE section officers can encourage students to submit their work as a paper to the SPC.  This is a good exercise for students, especially those who intend to continue to a doctorate. 

WHO COULD PARTICIPATE 

IEEE Region 8 Student Paper Contest is for IEEE R8 student members or graduate student  members who have not yet started their PhD. Only IEEE R8 student members could be authors  of the IEEE R8 SPC papers. Since the five finalist papers are being included in the conference  proceedings as well as in IEEE Xplore Library, the rules will now allow that the name of the  supervisor/mentor may be added, as an author, to the final version of the paper. This does  not change in any way the basic rule that the submitted paper is the work of the student. Each student author must be a member of an IEEE Student Branch at the time of the original  submission of the paper to the Branch Contest, and a member (student or not) of the IEEE at  the time of the R8 Oral Finals presentation. The work presented has to be completed before the student receives the engineering degree that entitles her/him to start preparing a doctoral thesis. The submission of the paper to the SPC must be completed within 12 months after  graduation. A doctoral thesis is not considered. Published work is excluded from the Contest. 

CHARACTER OF THE PAPER 

Papers should cover technical and engineering aspects of a subject reasonably within or related  to the areas with which the IEEE is concerned with. The work need not be original in  engineering or scientific content, but should be original in treatment and concise in coverage of  the author’s contribution to the subject. 

PAPER REVIEW, JURY, FINALISTS, ORAL FINALS AND PRIZES 

A first evaluation phase (paper review) will be carried out by four jury members including the  SPC Coordinator. The jury members may also use the experts in the pertinent subject area as  reviewers. They will grade the written papers sent by Student Branches to the Regional contest  without knowledge of the identity of the authors and of their school. Based on this evaluation,  the SPC Coordinator will decide which five papers will be accepted for presentation at the  Regional Oral Finals. All five finalists will be invited and financially supported to present their  papers at the IEEE R8 flagship conference MELECON 2022, June 14-16, Palermo, Italy. Papers presented at the Oral Finals will be published in the Conference Proceedings and included  in IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The Jury members will grade the oral presentations and three best  finalists will get prizes ($800, $500, and $200 respectively). The student branch of the student  who wins first prize also gets as an award of $250. 

DEADLINE AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

The deadline to send full papers to IEEE Region 8 Student Paper Contest 2022 is December 1, 2021 December 15, 2021. Please send papers by email to [email protected].

ATTACHMENTS

• SPC Rules

• IEEE Copyright Form

1st PHASE SELECTION REPORT

For the 2021 edition of the Region 8 Student Paper Contest (SPC) we received 9 papers coming from 7 countries (Belgium, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovenia, and UAE), from the following Student Branches:

1. Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Serbia  
2. Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
3. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Slovenia
4. Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
5. Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia
6. University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
7. Al-Balqa Applied University, Amman, Jordan
8. Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingenieurs, Rabat, Morocco
9. Rochester Institute of Technology, Dubai, UAE

This year, the members of the SPC international jury are:

• Professor Paul Micallef from Malta,
• Professor Giambattista Gruosso from Italy,
• Professor Mike Hinchey from the UK, 
• Professor Vera Markovic from Serbia, who is also the SPC Coordinator

The jury has anonymously selected the following five papers (listed in alphabetical order) for the Regional Oral Finals, which will be held within the frame of an IEEE conference: 

• Eva Boneš, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, “Automatic segmentation of the Golgi apparatus in volumetric data with approximate labels”
• Olivier Leblanc, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, “An affordable pedagogical setup for wave-particule duality and applications to chaotic stadium cavity”
• Predrag Aleksov, Damjan Denić, Igor Vučković, Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Serbia, “Object recognition with machine learning for people with visual impairment”
• Salma Moufid, Chaimae El Ainzroudi, Fatima Zahra Lachgar, Anass Ait Ben El Arbi,  Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingenieurs, Rabat, Morocco, “Improving Steganography using Image Compression JPEG”
• Yazan Alnajjar, Rochester Institute of Technology, Dubai, UAE, “Next-Generation Network Intrusion Detection System (NG_NIDS)”

The Student Activities Committee congratulates the authors of the five chosen papers and thanks all participants in the SPC contest.

2nd PHASE – ORAL FINALS

This year, due to travel restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, the SPC 2021 Oral Finals will be postponed! Hoping that the situation will be significantly better in the fall, the Finals will be organized in
October 2021. The final decision on the location and format will be announced in August 2021.

Vera Markovic

SPC Coordinator