A student team from American University of Sharjah (AUS) won top honors at the Millennial Engagement Competition held recently at the Mega City Infrastructure Week for their project “Smart Emergency Evacuation.” The event was a regional conference themed around smart city innovation.

Computer science and engineering majors Omar Al Hammadi, Hassan Al Noman, Salman Sowdagar, and Vikram Sakki competed against 12 teams from various universities in two rounds.

The project focused on the concept of smart homes where students developed beamers that could be installed in a room or building that would alert individuals to a fire and guide them to the nearest and safest exist. The system is independent from the network and power system and functions on batteries allowing it to work at all times and without any hindrance.

The project was supervised by Dr. Imran Zualkernan, Professor of Computer Engineering, and Dr. Fadi Aloul, Professor of Computer Engineering and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the AUS College of Engineering (CEN). 

“This project is part of the work being done that focuses on smart cities, smart homes, and smart buildings, etc. It utilizes mobile applications to guide people to safety in cases of emergency as well as alert the authorities about the location of those still inside the buildings. We are proud to see our students navigating new technologies and succeeding, which is a testimony to the caliber of students and faculty at AUS,” said Dr. Aloul.