USC’s Electronics and Communications Engineering students won major awards in the National Students Summit held on November 21 to 26, 2021. 

Sophia Dianne K. Bernardo, Mike Wenmar Y. Payo, Rochel V. Valle bagged the first place in the Programming Competition besting five different Student Chapters all over the Philippines. The team, which also won the top prize in the Cebu leg of the competition (see related story), was coached by Engr. Ellen Agnes M. Zafra.

Bernardo and Payo, under the mentorship of Engr. Joseph Karl G. Salva also won in the Undergraduate Research Competition. Their research, “QR-based Personal Data Collection System for COVID- 19 Response Automatic Contact Tracing Database Development” received the Best in Research Design and Best in Research Presentation awards. 

The programming competition included C++, Java, and Python 3 problems while the research contest had three phases: initial evaluation and screening phase, semifinals, and finals.

The event was sponsored by the National Chapter of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of the Philippines (IECEP) Inc. and duly organized by the IECEP National Student Affairs Committee, through the IECEP Manila Student Chapter (IECEP-MSC) and IECEP Rizal Student Chapter (IECEP-RSC).