Greek Students Get First Prize at International Design Competition in Germany

The Greek team of the Technical Institute of Serres won first prize in the design competition as part of an international robotics competition which took place in Germany recently.

Vice-president of the Technical Institute, Anastasios Moysiades, told the Newsit website that young Greeks with keen minds will show off another face of Greece, the one boasting a country that is able to excel in many sectors.

The students in the engineering department of the Institute, Christos Calemos and Costas Paraskevaidis, and the information technology student, Stergios Marias, under the supervision and contribution of their professor Demetres Sagris, took part in the international contest “Design Challenge 2012,” hosted by the Jade Hochschule School in Germany.

It was the first time that a Greek team took part in the competition and was able to send the country’s leading innovators into the design sector “knockout” phase.  The three students ranked first in the design component while their the placed 6th in the overall competition.

Anastasios Moysiades further declared after the students’ victory that “for the very first time, we sent three students to the competition which has been going on for the past 18 years in Germany. This year 16 more countries from all over the world participated, and we managed to get first place. The committee told us that it is the first time in the competition’s history that a team presented such a complete mechanism, ready to be produced.”

The fact that the Greeks ranked sixth in the overall competition proves more amazing in the light of  Mr Moysiades comment that “we decided to enter the competition at the last minute. We arrived in Germany only two hours before the competition.”

This victory is really important to Greece and, of course, taking into consideration the obstacles the students faced, heralding from a second-class institute with minimal resources and lack of funds, their success seems even more astounding. Mr Moysiades congratulated the students and their professor on their momentous achievement.