April 29th, 2015: A group of students from Canadian University Dubai (CUD) has triumphed in their first outing at the annual Dubai Customs Intellectual Property (IP) Awards. The team of nine students from the University’s Bachelor of e-Business program overcame tough competition from veterans of the contest to take first prize in the Best IP Website category.
Now in their 8th year, the Dubai Customs IP Awards are designed to encourage community engagement in IP protection and education, and to promote research, innovation and IP development among the student population.
The competition runs across seven different categories and attracts major higher education institutions from across the whole of the UAE. The CUD team was first up among all the winners to collect their trophy during the award ceremony at the Marriot Jaddaf Hotel, which was held in conjunction with World Intellectual Property Day on April 26th.
Supervised by Dr. Anas Najdawi, Assistant Professor of e-Business, the CUD team combined their programming, design and content development skills to produce a comprehensive, interactive and user-friendly website, including both English and Arabic content. Alongside the website, the students were challenged with creating an eye-catching logo and a simple yet relevant name for their new site.
According to student Munir Abdullahi, it was a daunting but exciting challenge to take on. He said, “This is the first time any of us have entered into anything like this and while we were determined to work hard on the project, we never imagined we would win.”
The team took their inspiration from the Dubai skyline and the national flag to create an imaginative logo for the website, which they named Dubai Intellectual Property Awareness or ‘DIPA’ for short. Students Nada Al Sharidah and Joshua D’Souza took charge of creating the written content, while Salem Amin went in front of the camera to shoot an entertaining and educational video explaining the basics of IP.
Nada said, “Working on the website content was a big challenge. IP can be seen as a complicated and mundane subject, so we had to concentrate on making the language accessible and the content as interesting as possible.”
Fellow student Ahmed Hassan was the team’s motivator, waking up his teammates each morning to make sure they met on time to work on the project. He also applied his motivation and sense of fun to the website production.
Ahmed explained, “We wanted to engage the audience in different ways, so alongside the written and video content I came up with the idea of a quiz, which challenges users to test their knowledge of IP.”
Following the win, the team is now set to fully deploy their website and have also been invited to continue working with Dubai Customs to develop the platform as a public source of IP information, carrying the Dubai Customs logo.
For Joshua, the association with such an organization is a huge motivation. He said, “To have our project recognized as the best by an organization such as Dubai Customs is a great honour for us all.”
Having developed a strong team dynamic, the group is now keen to work together to further develop their creation. Salem concluded, “The Award has been a major milestone for us, but it’s also the beginning of a project that we will continue to work on to develop and improve.”
Dr. Najdawi, who supported the students throughout the process, said he was delighted by the team’s success. He revealed, “I was extremely impressed by the ideas, functionality and components the students came up with, with little previous experience and in such a short period of time.
“Participating in such competitions is an opportunity for the University to support the society it is a part of, as well as a valuable learning experience for our students. I am delighted we have been able to produce something that will ultimately be of benefit to the wider UAE community.”
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