Conference 2022

7th SONEUK Conference 

London, 09/07/2022: The Society of Nepalese Engineers in UK (SONEUK) organised its 7th SONEUK International Conference on “Engineering and Technology for Sustainability” on Saturday, 9th July 2022 in Ealing, London, UK. The conference was inaugurated by Nepalese Ambassador to the UK His Excellency Mr Gyan Chandra Acharya with his warm graces by lighting pair of candles. The conference was attended physically by around 40 Nepali engineers living in the UK, and also by some keynote speakers and technical paper presenters online from abroad, including from Nepal and the USA. 

The inaugural session was conducted by the General Secretary of SONEUK, Dr Bidur Ghimire. In the program, electronic conference proceedings was also unveiled by HE Ambassador Mr Gyan Chandra Acharya. The publication contains eleven technical papers, most of which were related to Nepalese contexts and focussed on sustainability, environment, air pollution, health and safety, disaster management, sustainable & integrated and clean transportation, and a new alternative approach for delivering railway infrastructure projects. In his inaugural speech, HE Ambassador Mr Acharya expressed his confidence that the conferences like this will play an important role in the development of Nepal and in sustainable development through knowledge and technology transfer and sharing ideas among the engineers and policy makers. He also extended his appreciation to SONEUK for its activities which has connected the Nepalese engineers in the UK and around the world, including generous contribution made by SONEUK towards social and humanitarian causes in Nepal during the difficult times. 

Introducing the conference theme and outlining the technical sessions, Vice Chairperson of SONEUK and Coordinator of the Conference Mr Narad Bhandari, who attended virtually throughout the day because of the COVID infection, highlighted that this year’s conference is the continuation of past SONEUK conferences organised annually to promote professional engineering development by exchanging ideas and sharing experiences from professional engineers and academics around the globe. Mr Bhandari highlighted that the engineering and technology have played and will continue to play a pivotal part in the future of sustainable development, and engineers have a significant role to play in it, starting from planning and designing to implementation of a project or service in every sector of industries from micro to macro levels. He also appreciated and expressed his gratitude to all the authors, keynote speakers and presenters for their valuable contributions to this conference, and special appreciation to Ms Megha Poudyal, one of the SONEUK executive members, for her dedication and hard work for preparing attractive posters, flyers and proceedings layouts, and other executive and conference committee members. 

The technical session of the conference was divided into two sessions, conducted by conference coordinator Mr Narad Bhandari, facilitated by SONEUK Secretary Dr Roshan Bhattarai and Executive Committee member Mr Ravi Chandra Koirala. The first technical session was chaired by Prof Hom Nath Dhakal from the University of Portsmouth, whereas 2nd technical session by Associate Prof Ramesh Marasini from Buckinghamshire New University. In the technical sessions, seven technical papers and two keynote speeches were delivered by the presenters in their chosen topics.     

In his closing remarks, Chairperson of SONEUK Mr Sanyukta Shrestha thanked Chief guest, guests, SONEUK executive committee and conference committee members, general members and participants, including those presenters joined virtually from abroad for making the conference a grand success. He further emphasised that the conference was indeed one more takeaway for his team before completing executive tenure in a month or so.