BITS, Pilani - Dubai sent an 18 member contingent to take part in APOGEE '09, the 27th International Technology Festival organized by BITS, Pilani - Rajasthan between March 23 - 27, 2009. The entire fest saw around 9000 participants from over 60 universities in India participating in close to 75 different technical and non-technical events. The participating colleges included IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, NMIMS Mumbai, PEC Punjab, NIT Jaipur, IT BHU and the hosts BITS, Pilani etc.

The team representing BITS, Pilani - Dubai consisted of the following students: - 1) Piyush Singh 10) Aditya Goel 2) Vidur Uthappa 11) Romell Mehta 3) Siddharth Telidevara 12) Nehash Jadhav 4) Haksing Zimik 13) Maulesh Trivedi 5) Prateek Jain 14) Pavitra Bhalla 6) Eshaan Jain 15) Guneet Singh 7) Advait Krishna 16) Shiv Saxena 8) Sana Zaman 17) Pranav Bhardwaj 9) Devdatt Maganty 18) Nisarg Yagnik

The entire contingent yet again made the Institute proud by performing exceptionally well in the face of such stiff competition as they managed to grab first place positions in three events and second place positions in another three.

The events that they stood second in included the quizzes 'Excalibur Alternative', where the participating members were Devdatt Maganty and Aditya Goel; 'Journo Quiz' where we were represented by Piyush Singh and Romell Mehta and the extremely prestigious 'Brain of BITS', a single participant quiz, in which Piyush Singh became the first person from outside the host college to ever make it to the final round, eventually finishing up in the Runner-Up position by the narrowest of margins.

The events where BITS, Pilani - Dubai managed to secure first place included 'Schedio', which was a CATIA designing competition where we were represented by Advait Krishna and Eshaan Jain; Sana Zaman also grabbed the honor of being named the best delegate at the BITSMUN that was held as part of APOGEE '09 and finally BITS, Pilani - Dubai managed to defend its title at the highly prestigious 'Junkyard Wars' event where the team of Eshaan Jain, Siddharth Telidevara, Vidur Uthappa and Prateek Jain had to first qualify through 2 grueling aptitude based rounds only to be given the task to build a working 3 wheeler vehicle that could achieve the highest speed and also be able to pick up and drop waste material effectively. All this they managed to do within the stipulated time of sixteen hours and hence easily beat the rest of the competition to win the event.

Thus APOGEE '09 turned out to be an extremely fruitful event for BPD as we were able to not only compete but also outperform some of the top colleges and Universities of India.