Ahmed Deepto writes about the fascinating creations of a young engineering prodigy Mohammad Rezwanul Islam of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology who aspires to pursue a career abroad amid a lack of appreciation at home
They say your work will display how much interest you have on a specific field. A standing example of this statement is Mohammad Rezwanul Islam, a final year civil engineering student of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology who has already shown his talent in engineering field by inventing several innovations that can be used for the betterment of the country.
In 2013, during a long break after a semester and a movement going on at BUET, Rezwanul, then a second year student grew an urge to use this break for a purpose. His university teacher advised him to work on vibration after Rezwanul emailed him what to do in semester break. Later, Rezwanul started to work with vibration and invented three different devices: Connected Seismograph for earthquake measurement, shore pile monitoring device for piling at construction sites and lifetime settlement measuring device to calculate stability of an establishment.
An aficionado of circuits, lights and capacitor from a very early age, Rezwanul had overwhelming influence and interest in electronics since he was a fourth grader. Fondly called a genius by his friends, the love for science and electronics drove him to pursue his academic interest in the same discipline.
A cousin first introduced him with lights, transistor, capacitor and small electronic parts that grew his fascination more towards engineering.
In his eighth grade Rezwanul developed a ‘Laser Security Control Device’ that could alarm intrusion. With the progression of time he started learning microcontroller and single chip computer with the help of internet and books.
This prodigy learnt several programming language including Visual Basic, Java, Wiring and Assembly by himself with help of internet and books, some of them even before he entered college. Although he is not a student of computer science and engineering but he learnt these on personal interest.
After completing his secondary and higher secondary school from Motijheel Government Boys High School and Engineering University Higher Secondary School in science, he initially wanted to pursue his higher studies in computer science. Unfortunately he did not qualify in the merit list ‘but it didn’t keep away my interest form electronics,’ says the 23-year-old.
Although he joined in the civil engineering discipline, a subject which remotely has any relation with electronics, he continued his experiments with electronics on his own.
In 2013, he started working on developing a device that could measure the intensity of earthquake. The final prototype of the device came into being at the end of 2014.
While a seismograph machine in the market would cost two to three crore takas, Rezwanul prepared the device with a cost of Tk 30,000-40,000.
It all started with exploring the science of vibration when he realised that earthquake too has vibration in the ground and that got him into thinking of preparing the device, says Rezwanul.
‘My seismograph is wireless and a portable machine of the size of a typical hard disk. It can measure any kind of shake and display the reading on the LCD screen of the device,’ Rezwanul tells New Age Youth. Once connected to a computer, it is capable of providing a detail graph and scientific analysis.
After developing seismograph, Rezwanul developed a ‘Rail Cop’ in 2014 which can detect disjointed railway sleepers, two kilometers ahead of such disruption. The country was experiencing major political turmoil in 2014 and railway sleepers were often disjointed by troublemakers. Rezwanul thought the time was pertinent to create a device that could prevent major accidents. He explains that the device would be attached with the train engine and modules from the rail line would send signal to the engine the moment it detects disruption.
Rezwanul possesses a 3D printer that he bought with the prize money he won from a hackathon competition he participated in 2014.
Using the printer, he made a 3D computer mouse that can be used in the air and without a surface. It would bring more excitement for gamers, says Rezwanul.
More recently, the young engineer developed stumps and bail with LED. The idea of LED stumps and bails is that every time stumps are hit, the lights will blink. While current product available in the market costs Tk 32 lakh, Rezwanul tells New Age Youth that he is capable of developing the product within one lakh takas.
‘Usually, a BUET student works only on a specific project but I had developed almost eight projects in last three years,’ says the young developer. Despite such fascinating creations, his projects however, have not earned any attention from the authorities in his university, private companies or the goverment to turn them in to more than an acdemic project.
‘I know my projects would be possible to bring them commercially into the industry but who would sponsor that?’ asks Rezwanul.
Having said that Rezwanul does not have any regrets. ‘If my country doesn’t appreciate some other will,’ he says.
Unfortunately, Rezwanul’s future plan is to go abroad for higher education and set a career there like most other BUET students because he thinks that there is better future waiting outside than at home.
‘Youths in the country have so many potentials and talents but no one is here to nourish them,’ says a worried Rezwanul.