ICEPE 2019 ends with a hope of a prosperous Bangladesh

A three-day International Conference on Energy and Power Engineering (ICEPE 2019), starting on the 14th March, 2019, was organized by The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) of BRAC University (BracU) ended on Saturday, 16 March 2019. The international conference took place at the picturesque Brac CDM, Savar, Dhaka. The technical co-sponsor of the event was the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES).

Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury Bir Bikram, energy advisor to the Prime Minister, inaugurated the conference as the chief guest. He said that Bangladesh’s transformation has been tremendous in the past 10 years with the percentage of people getting access to electricity increasing from 45 to 90 percent. He expected more collaboration with the IEEE Power and Energy Society and others present at the conference in solving problems of Bangladesh’s power sector.

Professor Saifur Rahman, president of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, said there were 5 million papers in IEEE Power and Energy Society database, which sees 3 million downloads every month.

The IEEE Power and Energy Society helped the Bangladesh Government to set up an Energy, Power and Research Centre, he informed, urging the government and top officials to use current economic growth and enthusiasm to build a better Bangladesh.

Professor Vincent Chang, Vice Chancellor of Brac University said that energy was playing a critical role in economic development of Bangladesh while historically energy technologies have propelled development.

Dhaka is a growing city of transformation and hopefully in the next 5 years Dhaka will develop by quite a few notches higher, he added.

Professor Shahidul Islam Khan, chairperson of the EEE department, presented the welcome speech. Organized for the first time by the department, ICEPE 2019 aimed at providing a platform to lead researchers, engineers and scientists in the areas of power and energy engineering.

ICEPE 2019 called for papers from researchers nationally and internationally on 10 December 2018. In total 36 papers were selected for presentation in the conference.

Three best papers and two projects by students were awarded with prize and certification in the closing ceremony.

Dr. Ahmad Kaikaus, Senior Secretary Power Division, Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, GoB joined the closing ceremony on the last day of the conference.

Young generation had enormous potential to grow. There were a lot of things to be done in the energy and power sector in our country. It needed young people like you, he said to the students presented in the event.  

Eminent professors and experts from the USA, UK, China, India, Australia and Bangladesh conducted panel sessions and keynote talks on power and energy related topics during this three day conference.

Pro-Vice Chancellor of BracU, Mohammad Tamim concluded the conference by giving vote of thanks.