Khalifa Secondary School, Qatar Science and Technology Secondary School, and Ibn Taymya Secondary School were named first, second and third place winners in their category at the recent closing ceremony of the 6th ChemE Car Competition for High Schools. The competition took place yesterday in Qatar University (QU).

The competition was organized by QU’s College of Engineering (CENG) Department of Chemical Engineering (DChE) in collaboration with its AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) student chapter. A total of ten high schools in Qatar participated in this year’s edition.

The competition aims to encourage creativity and innovation among students and reaches out to high school students, encouraging them to enter chemical engineering programs.

The competition required participants to design and race a small car that is operated through chemical processes and carrying a load of water (0-500g) for a distance of between 15-30 meters. Teams were given information of the load amount and distance about two hours before the competition. This year the load was 150g and the target distance was 15.0 meters.

In the lead up to the competition, which started in October 2022, the Department of Chemical Engineering team offered several sessions for participating schools to guide them on competition guidelines, rules, and safety regulations in addition to the main phases they need to go through to accomplish their car designs and calibration tasks.

Commenting on the competition, CENG Chemical Engineering Department Head Prof. Majeda Khraisheh said, “The ChemE Car Competition is an event created to attract students to STEM fields and to introduce Qatari students to the chemical engineering discipline. It is exciting to see that almost 70 students participated this year from high schools in this event. Today was truly an exciting day for us. It was nice to see the students deeply engaged in the competition and to see their teachers guiding and supporting their efforts. We like to extend our gratitude to the principals and administration of the ten participating independent schools; and we look forward to seeing them back again next year.”

She added, “One of the main aims of the competition is to see how students overcome the technical challenges they face as they prepare for the race. All student teams worked well together to address these challenges.”