NSU ACM student chapter hosts 17th innovation challenge

The North South University (NSU) ACM Student Chapter has successfully hosted the 17th edition of its flagship event, the Innovation Challenge (IC), presented by Computer Mania BD.

The annual platform provides a venue for final-year students to present their capstone projects to faculty, industry specialists, and peers.

Organised each semester, the Innovation Challenge serves as the culminating showcase for graduating students, where projects—developed over four years of study—are presented to a panel of judges. Beyond academics, the event also acts as a launchpad for internships, research opportunities, and industry placements.

Season 17 began with an exhibition-style showcase, where participants defended their projects before judges and the audience. The judging panel included NSU faculty members Dr Mohammad Abdul Qayum and Dr Sumaiya Tabassum Nimi, alongside industry leaders Mahmudur Rahman, principal software engineer at Astha IT, and Shifat ul Hoque Sonnet, lead IoT product manager at Grameenphone.

Projects were evaluated based on innovation, feasibility, societal impact, and the clarity of their presentation. The champion project was Graph Enhanced Vision Pipeline for Weakly Supervised Histopathology Slide Classification. The first runner-up was A Multi-Agent RAG System for Legal Information Retrieval in Bangladesh, while ScanMate secured second runner-up and also won the award for Best Poster Design.

The event was sponsored by Computer Mania BD, with The Business Standard, Sunquick, Snapshot Stories, and NSU TV & Radio as partners.

With the conclusion of IC Season 17, NSU ACM SC reaffirmed its mission to provide a platform for young innovators ready to tackle real-world problems. For the participants, it marked the end of their undergraduate journey and the beginning of new opportunities.