Castigatori – Interactive Digital Media Student Contest

Winners of the Interactive Digital Media Student Contest 2025 - UPT

The UPT Library hosted on Friday, June 20, 2025, the 11th edition of the Interactive Digital Media Student Contest 2025 (IDMSC 2025), organized in a hybrid format by Politehnica University of Timișoara, through the Multimedia Center and the Department of ID/IFR and Digital Education. The event brought together undergraduate, master's and doctoral students from several universities in the country, but also from abroad, from partner higher education institutions within the E³UDRES² alliance.

The student competition, which has already become traditional, has as its main objective the stimulation of creativity and the spirit of competition in the multimedia field. The students had the opportunity to present their most interesting projects, but also to interact directly with representatives of the economic environment, potential employers of the participants. The jury was formed by specialists from the university and from the companies that offer the prizes.

At the opening of the event, the rector of Politehnica University Timișoara, Associate Professor, PhD, Florin Drăgan, thanked the representatives of the companies who took the time to support this competition, also emphasizing the opportunity that the participants have to be directly evaluated by potential employers, Professor, PhD, Radu Vasiu, the initiator of the competition, spoke about its tradition in UPT, Professor, PhD, Cătălin Căleanu, the dean of the Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technologies, congratulated the students for their hard work, and Andrei-Sebastian Nicula, last year's winner, encouraged this year's participants.

This was followed by presentations by partner companies, of the latest projects they are running, and their representatives also emphasized that supporting universities in organizing competitions of this kind is mutually beneficial, and the ideas coming from such competitions are a source of inspiration for companies as well.

This was followed by presentations of student projects, individually or in teams, in the six sections of the competition:

Web Development – in which competitors demonstrated their technical skills in developing a web application, on a current topic;
Development for Mobile Devices – mobile applications that use any computing architecture (stand-alone, client-server, peer-to-peer, etc.), including augmented and virtual reality applications;
Graphic Design and Audio-Video Production – advertising design and graphics belonging to one of the following genres of audio-video productions: videos, commercials, credits/promos/trailers, video animations, video materials, timelapse, special effects;
Internet of Things – prototypes and concepts of interconnected computer systems and devices, which collect data and communicate with each other in complex ways, often without human intervention;
eXtended Reality – AR/VR/XR/MR applications – Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR), realized in various dedicated immersive technologies;
Digital heritage – digital applications (web, mobile, AR/VR/XR) that promote cultural/artistic/scientific heritage.

Following the judging of the projects presented by students, the winners of the sections of the 2025 edition of the Interactive Digital Media Student Contest are the following:

Web Development – the PaletteLab project, presented by master's student Ana-Maria-Andreea Căiniceanu from ETcTI, UPT, an intelligent web application, designed for color corrections, which generates color palettes in three types of conversions, for web, digital and print, and the BurnoutGuard project – Intelligent System for Detecting Professional Burnout, a project presented by Sandra Nemoianu (master's student, Aurel Vlaicu University, Arad) & Adile Nemoianu (doctoral student, MPT, UPT), an intelligent application, designed to detect and prevent professional burnout, providing personalized recommendations and calculating the optimal level of breaks and working hours to maintain the balance and well-being of employees.

Internet of Things – Automated Recycling System, presented by student Alexandrina Tudosiev from Automation and Computers, UPT, a smart trash can that simplifies the recycling process! Users can enter up to four types of waste, and the system, equipped with sensors, automatically detects the type of waste and rotates the internal trash cans for appropriate collection.

Mobile Development – the Krizzle project, an application through which you can interactively organize different lists, from games, shopping, projects, presented online by student Noëlle Jamöck and developed by Noëlle, together with Michaela Topalovic, Marco Hubert, Stefanie Plankensteiner & Seonghyeon Kim from the University of Applied Sciences in St. Pölten, Austria.

eXtended Reality – BellLabs VR Expo, a project presented by master's student Cătălin Savoiu from Multimedia Technologies, ETcTI, UPT, which integrated the Nokia building, where the Telephone Museum is located, with each device in the museum being 3D scanned and included in the application, offering a detailed digital reproduction.

Digital heritage – the "Nostalgia" project – An Augmented Reality App for Cultural Heritage & Tourism, an application that completely changes the way we learn about cultural heritage, allowing users to explore 14 categories of wonders of the world, from "ancient wonders" to "modern wonders", in a completely immersive way, where they can see the monuments in Augmented Reality (AR), both in their current form and as they looked thousands of years ago, a project presented by master's student Loretta-Briana Bocșa from Software Engineering, AC, UPT.

Graphic Design and Audio-Video Production – the Enigma project, a captivating video production, inspired by real life, a memorable visual and auditory experience, presented by students Andi-Octavian Bivolaru, Ion Geru & Cosmin Maroiu from Multimedia Technologies, ETcTI, UPT.

The Grand Prize of this year's competition was won by Alexandru-Mihai Zvîncă, a student from Automatics and Computers, UPT, who presented TreeHelper – Wood Transport Authorization and Monitoring System, a wood transport monitoring system that uses cameras placed on forest roads to detect timber trucks. The system automatically identifies license plates, and if the transport is considered illegal, through a check in a database, the authorities are instantly alerted via SMS.

Politehnica University of Timisoara (www.upt.ro), the oldest higher education institution in the west of the country, was established by Royal Decree signed by King Ferdinand on November 11, 1920. A university of advanced research and education, UPT is today one of the Romanian schools with tradition, recognized nationally and internationally, both through the activity of generations of teaching staff and that of prestigious academics, as well as through the over 140,000 graduates who have carried its fame throughout the world. Also having an enviable material base, the university's 10 faculties provide study programs for approximately 13,500 students.

The international dimension of Politehnica University Timișoara is also highlighted by the fact that it is part of the European consortium of universities E³UDRES² – Engaged and Entrepreneurial European University as Driver for European Smart and Sustainable Regions, an initiative supported by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ program. E³UDRES² brings together top European universities to collaborate in the development of smart and sustainable regions through innovative education, applied research and transdisciplinary cooperation. More information is available on the official website: https://www.eudres.eu/.