UNY managed to bring home the achievements of the IPITEx 2019 competition held at BITEC, Bangkok, Thailand. Bangkok International Intellectual Property, Invention, Innovation and Technology Exposition (IPITEx 2016) is an International Research Competition organized by the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) on 1 - 6 February 2019. Thailand Inventors' Day is also an international forum established to exhibit potential and interesting discoveries and innovations from international inventors /innovators. This exhibition is known as Bangkok International Intellectual Property, Invention, Innovation and Technology Exposition (IPITEx). This event is held every year, to create collaboration between Thai and international inventors / organizations. The exhibition is grouped into two categories, namely Invention and Innovation for Social and Quality of Life with sub categories of Medicine and Public Health, Environmental Protection / Energy, and Educational / Office / Household Equipment and Materials and the categories of Invention and Innovation for Industry with Food sub-categories / Cosmetics, Modern Agriculture / Robotics /Electronics / Automation.

UNY team were led by Hanafiah Ali, a student from the Faculty of Social Sciences.Other students who joined the team  were Fajar Meirani(Mathematics Education), Mohammad Fadly (Management) and Sukarno (English Education). The team   won two awards, namely the Special Award from the Association of Polish Inventors and Rationalizers, Poland and the Bronze Award from the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT), Thailand.

Both of these awards were achieved in the category of Invention and Innovation for Social and Quality of Life in the Environmental Protection / Energy sub-category with the Water Tunnel Clogged Detection product Tool to Help a Flood Mitigation (WANGON), which is an innovation to detect blockage / trash in the culvert , with sensors that can determine the distance from objects / garbage that clog the culverts.

Ali revealed, they chose WANGON because of the problem of frequent blockages in culverts has caused flooding. The absence of tools to help these problems make people have to check directly into the sewers and certainly not effective. "The absence of the tool which can help detect trash in culverts makes us think of creating this WANGON tool innovation," he explained.

The 2019 IPITEx race was attended by a total of 443 research teams from 25 countries around the world who gathered and competed to exhibit innovations in accordance with the categories and scientific focus of each participant. "Thank God, thanks to the hard work of the UNY team, this achievement can be achieved. "Achieving this achievement is expected to spur creativity and innovation from all UNY students to always contribute to achieving achievements, especially in the international arena," concluded Ali. (fadhli)