Description

The IEEE Signal Processing Cup 2021 (SP Cup 2021) is a competition organized by the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP). ICASSP is the annual flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society which is the world’s premier association for signal processing engineers, academics, and industry professionals. This year ICASSP 2021 was held from the 6th to 11th of June 2021, virtually in Toronto, Canada. The IEEE SP Cup competition is the most prestigious competition in signal processing for undergraduate students. About 50 teams participated in the competition with nearly 300 students from all over the world. The IEEE Signal Processing Society Student Branch Chapter of University of Moratuwa took the initiative to organize teams from the university and facilitate a pathway for the students to compete in the IEEE SP Cup 2021. The team registration deadline for this year’s competition was on the 15 th of March 2021. Our student branch chapter distributed a form among the batches of our university to submit their team details. Then, we organized meetings with the 6 teams who completed and submitted the forms, and formally introduced them to the competition by discussing the timeline of the competition, its research focus and outcomes and benefits from participating in such a prestigious competition. For the teams to be eligible for the competition each team required a mentor. Therefore, for each team our student branch chapter assigned 6 separate mentors who were experienced academics in the field of signal processing from the academic staff of the Electronic and Telecommunication Department of University of Moratuwa. The mentors were assigned randomly and then we provided guidelines for each team to register for the SP Cup 2021. Four of the teams: Team T-Cubed, Wireless-Shark, Team Centura and DAIA obtained the 3 rd , 7 th , 16 th and 21 st places in the first round of the competition out of around 50 teams from all over the world. Team T-Cubed was qualified for the final round and they emerged as champions of the IEEE SP Cup 2021. This remarkable achievement cements the capabilities of Sri Lankan undergraduates and hence further enhances the image of our community within the global signal processing community.