The University of Dubai (UD) students won the 2nd place at the Youth Sustainability Competition, a pioneering initiative designed by the College of Business Administration (CoBA) at the University of Sharjah in partnership with Bee’ah. 

Students across all UAE universities participated at the Youth Sustainability Competition with their creative solutions to address challenges and problems identified by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The registration process ended on February 17, where students submitted a short brief of their ideas as proposed innovation solutions. 

The final results were announced on the 22nd of March at the University of Sharjah during a closing ceremony in which the UD team won the 2nd place among all participating universities.

The participating team members included the supervisor Soheila Ali, Shahad Elshehaby, Budour Albirakdar, Chahed Chouihna, and Raghad Diab. 

The Department of Student Services Manager at UD Haitham Al Maaini said that: ”At UD, we believe in sustainable and environment-friendly solutions. Being in a green and sustainable campus obliges us to inculcate the values of sustainable development.” He added that the University is proud of its students’ achievements and the level of awareness they have reached.

The team supervisor Soheila Ali explained more about their idea and said: “Our proposed solution was under the title of (U-TENG jogging Tracks in UAE), which is based on utilizing Ultra-Simple Triboelectric Nanogenerators (U-TENGs) to harness kinetic energy and converting it to electricity in jogging tracks, along with a mobile application that rewards users for each step and energy they generate. 

She added that their idea was shortlisted among the best 85 participating projects. “After the shortlisting announcement, the team worked effectively on creating and editing the video reflecting the proposed innovative solution along with a detailed explanation based on desktop research and the ability of implementation regionally and internationally. The required documents were submitted to the concerned entity on March 12,” she said. Our team got shortlisted for the second time for the final round (public voting at the forum)  along with 10 other shortlisted  participants, stated Soheila.