Gamal Talal Amer, a senior student in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department in Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), participated recently in the Third European International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management that was held in Pilsen, Czech Republic on July 23–26, 2019. The conference was organized by the IEOM Society International. Many academic and technical institutes participated in this event, such as the University of West Bohemia (Czech Republic), the University of Derby (UK), the University of the West of England (UK), etc.

The main theme of the conference was “Industrial Engineering and Operations Management for Industry 4.0”. About 320 papers/abstracts have been accepted from more than 500 submissions, representing more than 50 countries. This unique international conference provided a platform for academics, researchers, scientists and practitioners to exchange ideas to bridge the gap between the Industrial Engineering and Operations Management theory and its application to solve the most current problems and challenges faced by 21st century organizations.

Gamal Amer presented during the conference a research paper that was written by him and Mohamad Tasneem. This research was about “Design, Fabrication and Testing of a 3D Printer”. It started with a discussion about the field of 3D printing and a demonstration of its currently significant importance in many different fields and industries. Then the research discusses its main topic, that is, the process of Designing, Fabricating and Testing of a 3D Printer in the MIE Department in SQU, and how the design process started from the very beginning until we ended up with an innovative design for a 3D printer that had some unique features which caused it to have great printing accuracy and relatively high capability to compete with other products in this field. Finally, the results were discussed and the future plans to develop this printer were demonstrated.

Moreover, Gamal has presented a poster with the same title as the research. However, the poster aimed to discuss and highlight some other aspects of the project that were not covered in the research such as: the most significant challenges that were encountered in this project, how they were solved, etc. Both, the research and poster presentations, were highly appreciated by the conference attendees. Consequently, the research won the first place in the undergraduate research competition whereas the poster presentation won the second place in the poster competition. Gamal Talal Amer was awarded for both achievements in the conference awards dinner. It is important to mention that the team that worked in the final year project based on which the research and the poster were later developed. The team consisted of Gamal Talal Amer, Ahmed Khamis Al-Nadabi, Mohamad Hasan Tasneem, and Said Ali Al-Wadhahi and supervised by Prof. Tasneem Pervez.