La Fondation Dassault Systèmes celebrates UN's World Youth Skills Day  by providing a national level platform for budding engineers to present impressive engineering projects they worked upon. As part of their annual National Level 15 weeks Webinar Series to guide students to select meaningful engineering projects to become industry ready under ConnectNext Program, La Fondation Dassault Systemes will host an event showcasing the top four projects of the internship program offered to 14 engineering college teams in India involving 64 students and 14 industry mentors. The projects presented include the ‘Stacker Car Parking System', ‘Foldable Helmet' from the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala; the ‘Self-Balancing Solar Powered Vehicle for Short Distance Travel for Individual' from N K Orchid College of Engineering, Solapur and the ‘Efficient Post-Harvest Produce Preservation System' from PVG College of Engineering, Pune.

The program empowers students to be ‘Future Ready' while creating a vibrant industry-academia ecosystem that addresses the talent readiness and employability challenges in the engineering industries. Each project is supported by industry mentors and Dassault Systemes volunteers as project champions. The aim of the program lies in addressing the employability challenges while providing them with a unique ecosystem to demonstrate their skills and ability in the post-COVID world.

The ConnectNext program operates on a six step process. It guides students on impactful project ideas, provides a project library of industry recommended projects, provides an industry mentorship as well as industry internships. The program also provides a platform for industries to spot talents through innovative projects and subsequently publishes projects for young people as ‘Do It Yourself' kits.