20/04/2006

FITCE Belgium's new initiative 'FITCE.BE Young ICT Personality of the Year' has been a resounding success. FITCE Belgium  launched this initiative to stimulate young ICT professionals to present themselves, their ideas and views, and to introduce innovative thinking on a prescribed theme from the world of telecommunications. The candidates could use the opportunity to challenge established ideas, explore change or demonstrate their knowledge. This initiative took the form of a contest . The three best ranked candidates from the pre-selection rounds competed in the final round on 20 April during a public presentation event where a jury of senior ICT leaders selected the final winner. This year's theme for the contest was 'Innovation in Electronic Communication'.

And the winner is  



Steven Steven Van den Berghe, Senior Engineer UGent, IBCN-INTEC, IBBT.

FITCE Belgium thanks the president and members of the jury, distinguished individuals from public administration, academia and industry.



From the left, Eric Rosier (NEC Philips Unified Solutions, President AGORIA COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS, President of the Jury), Prof. Leo Van Biesen (VUB), Eric Van Heesvelde (Chairman of the Council  BIPT), Prof. Jos Dumortier (K.U.Leuven),  Frank Robben (General Manager, Federal Administration - Crossroads Bank, CEO SmalS-MvM). 




The three candidates who survived the pre-selections. From the left, Dieter Platel (Advisor ICT Agoria), Bart Van Der Meerssche (Research and Innovation Team from Alcatel & K.U.Leuven), Steven Van den Berghe (Senior Engineer UGent, IBCN-INTEC, IBBT). Dieter shows the short straw he drew and by which he was designated as the first one to go on stage.




Master of ceremony and coordinator for the contest was Marc Verbruggen (2MM), member of the board of FITCE Belgium.




Mr Eric Rosier, president of the jury announces the winner.




The president of FITCE Belgium José Van Ooteghem (VOCS), hands over the symbolic cheque to the winner. First prize is an all-in ticket to the FITCE congress 2006 in Athens. 

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Here is what Steven has to say about what it meant to him to participate and win the contest. Read also his views on the engineering profession and ICT. This is why more young people should get into engineering.

What did it mean to you to win the 'FITCE.BE Young ICT Personality 2006' competition? 
Winning the competition was of course the greatest personal achievement in my professional life so far. But even my participation as such, and especially the ability to present my vision in my own way in the finals, to public with a broad range of ICT (and even non-ICT) backgrounds was already one of the most interesting things I have done in my young ICT carreer.

Why did you choose to become an engineer? 
I've always been, and still am, interested in a wide range of subjects. And engineering is the place where "everything comes together". It's the place where mathematics meets biology, economics meets logic, and probably hundreds of other domains intersect when "trying to build a solution". And even though I have been focussing on a single domain (telecom) in the last seven years, I still encounter all these things while programming, finding heuristic algorithms, performing network simulations and so on.

What is so great about this profession? 
In a single word: challenges. I get up every morning knowing that new problems will need to be solved, products can be "invented" and already knowing in advance that the next day will bring even more and new challenges. So there is no room to get bored with it.

And more in particular, what is so exceptional about ICT? 
A lot of people will probably answer "the fact that it progresses so quickly" to this question. Well, I tend to disagree. For me we have always been, and still are, simply adding up registers in a CPU, storing data on a disk and sending packets over the network. The exceptional part is what we can build by integrating these simple components. It is amazing how we can continue to combine simple computations, data and packets over a wire to achieve new exceptional solutions such as interactive digital television and eHealth services.

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