Bright minds and bold ideas met at a national science and technology festival held at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, where thousands of young innovators, researchers and students packed the campus to show projects and learn from each other. The festival opened with an inauguration by the secretary of the ICT Division and quickly turned BUET into a lively hub of exhibits, talks and hands-on demos that made complex technology easy to see and try. Organised by Whiteboard Initiatives with support from the ICT Division and a2i, the event drew teams from leading universities including BUET, Dhaka University, KUET, CUET and RUET and featured an experience zone where visitors could try virtual reality and other new tools. City Bank served as title sponsor while MH Group, Prime Bank and Eastern Bank supported the programme, and local companies and partners helped create spaces for ideas to be shown, judged and discussed. The organisers set up competitions that invited more than five thousand participants to test inventions, apps and practical solutions, with judges ready to spot projects that are simple, useful and ready to scale. A Shaheed Tanveen Innovation Award was created to honour the top projects and give winners a way to gain visibility and support from mentors and funders. Mentors and workshop leaders ran short sessions on design, coding, sustainability and product pitching, and many teams received hands-on feedback that can help them turn prototypes into real products. The festival also created networking corners where students could meet investors, teachers and entrepreneurs to talk about internships, training and next steps. Practical stalls from banks and firms offered clear advice on small-scale funding and steps to grow a project, while demo areas showed working models that made technical ideas easy to understand for younger visitors. Outreach work reached around thirty thousand students across one hundred institutions, showing strong interest in science and tech learning beyond the main campus. Organisers emphasised that the festival is a platform to spot talent, share knowledge and build long-lasting networks, and they encouraged projects that solve everyday problems with local solutions. By bringing schools, universities and industry into one friendly space, the event sent a clear message that students are ready to learn quickly, try new things and help shape the country’s tech future, and many left with new contacts, fresh ideas to develop and renewed confidence to pursue innovation.
