HumasUPNVJ - Alifya Zahra and Ajeng Safitri, UPN "Veteran" Jakarta Industrial Engineering students, won achievements in an international paper competition and an interdisciplinary conference " The Fourth Asia Future Conference (AFC) " in South Korea. This event took place for 4 days starting from 24-28 August 2018. Alifya and Ajeng managed to get the Best Paper and Best Presentation awards, it was not easy to get these awards with quite tight competition, not only from undergraduate students from Indonesia, but also from students S2, S3, as well as professors and several researchers from Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, USA, China and India.

The Fourth Asia Future Conference (AFC) is an international paper competition and interdisciplinary conference that encourages various approaches to global issues to create interactive discussions. This activity was held for the 4th time by the AFC Academic Committee . This event is held every 2 years, and will be held again in 2020 in Manila, Philippines.

In this competition each team will go through 3 stages of selection. The first stage is Abstract Selection, where each team must create an Abstract which explains the essence of the idea to be conveyed. This stage starts from 1 May -31 August 2017. Participants who have passed the first stage of selection are then assessed whether they are entitled to get the AFC Scholarship or not, then the committee selects the 50 best abstracts from the 643 abstracts submitted. The results of this selection were announced on January 19 2018, in this selection Alifya and Ajeng were included as one of the 50 best abstracts. Recipients are entitled to a free registration and accommodation fee of $570 for first author . Furthermore, participants who pass the abstract selection must submit a full paper no later than March 31, 2018.

The AFC Academic Committee awards the best presentation award with a prize of $300 and the selected papers will be included in " Toward the Future of Asia: My Proposal Vol.4 " which will be published after the Conference. In this award the AFC Academic Committee selected 20 Best Papers from 137 teams with 56 judges.

“We presented on the first day, and the next day, just before Awarding Night , we got an email that we are entitled to the Best Presentation Award . This was beyond our expectations, because we thought that after getting the best paper we were no longer entitled to receive awards, especially since the presenters in the same cluster as us were Masters and Doctoral students, we were the only undergraduate students in the cluster," said Alifyah with proud.

Before participating in this event, Alifya and Ajeng also prepared themselves and tried to arrange time for lectures and discussions for this competition. "We make a priority scale and record the activities that will be carried out through the Google calendar so that you don't miss them and get notifications. However, first determine what activities you want to carry out and complete at the same time by making a priority scale. As students, especially engineering students, they must have a lot of busyness including organizational tasks and activities, the way to manage their time is to sort the level of urgency of these activities. Each activity has its own time,” said Ajeng.

Alifya and Ajeng also said that in participating in this prestigious event they did not escape the support from the people around them, both from fellow students and from lecturers.

“The main support is our teammates. I am also very grateful to them. And what definitely supports our team is Allah SWT. In addition, we are also very grateful to UPN "Veteran" Jakarta for sheltering us and supporting our activities. Thank you also to the rectorate, lecturers, all staff at the Faculty of Engineering, and our friends and family who have supported and prayed for us, without them we would not have been able to get here," said Alifya.

They also don't forget to give messages to other UPNVJ students "Message to fellow UPN "Veteran" Jakarta students, find something you really like, the opportunities out there are always wide open. If you fail, it's normal. Whatever happens be grateful, cause everything happens for a reason ”.