EBEC project has two kinds of categories teams can participate in: Team Design and Case Study. Both of categories have something in common: they challenge the students to put in practice the academical knowledge gained during their studies, usually approaching multidisciplinary engineering fields.

Team Design

The Team Design category consists in solving a given technical problem in teams within a limited time. The outcome of the competition is a device that has to perform the needed actions to solve the problem (e.g. building a machine capable of drawing a specific shape). Materials, tools and needed explanations are provided to the participants by the responsible organisers, in the day of the competition. The participants have to make a presentation outlining their solution process and a demonstration of a working physical prototype in front of a jury.
As it happened in the past two years one of the Team Design topics for EBEC Final will be provided by the United Nations Environmental Programme.

Case Study

The Case Study category tests the participants’ analytical thinking and consists in solving a technical or management real-life problem with no actual construction of any device or assembling of some materials, but using the information given to develop hypothetical solutions. In the end the teams shall give a presentation of the solutions they came up with in front of a jury.

During the Final round, European industrial partners cooperate with BEST, bringing some Case Study topics to be solved by the participants of the competition.