​ 

Left to right: Nawaf AlGhamdi, Mayadah AlHashem and Abdullah AlRamadan​

Congratulations to Nawaf AlGhamdi, Mayadah AlHashem and Abdullah AlRamadan on winning 1st place at the Middle Eastern Process Engineering Conference (MEPEC) technical debates held on 11 October 2017. MEPEC is the premier conference for oil and gas companies in the region.

The technical debates were held between 6 teams of 3 engineers each and was hosted by ChemME, which is the youth initiative component of MEPEC. They tackled technical issues related to sustainability, future energy usage, process safety measures, and regional policies. The teams were from different universities around the middle east including KAUST, KFUMP and University of Bahrain.

“I was initially concerned that our team comprised of three individuals with strong leadership skills. But we worked as a team and had a game plan before even starting the first round. We agreed to distribute the speaking time evenly and back each other’s arguments. Preparation was essential. As one of the judges expressed, our winning quality was that there were no individual favorites or a specific member that stood out too much. I'm glad we had the opportunity to demonstrate that!” said Mayadah AlHashem, MS graduate of Chemical Engineering who is now working for Saudi ARAMCO as a flow assurance engineer

"The competition was tough and the debates were intense at times, but the fact that there were two technically-adept, high-caliber individuals with me on the team made it a lot easier, and actually a lot more fun!” said Nawaf AlGhamdi, PhD candidate in chemical engineering at CCRC. 

”It was a really unique experience. Each argument we made needed to be backed up with as much evidence as possible. It was quite tough at the beginning but was exhilarating towards the end as you hear both sides of the argument. I'm sure this experience will help me look at all sides of any situation in the future.” said Abdullah AlRamadan, PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at CCRC. 

 - by Raheena Abdurehim