It had been nearly a decade since I first set foot on the EME campus, my heart full of hope for admission to NUST. After countless coaching sessions at KIPS and three attempts at the NET exam—each falling short of my dream discipline—I finally found myself enrolled in the Computer Engineering department at EME.

Almost immediately, I was surprised by small details—like buying my own university uniform—that felt oddly out of place, yet somehow only deepened my excitement. Those early days were an adventure: swimming laps in the campus pool, trying my hand at horse riding, and exploring the well-stocked libraries filled with cutting-edge resources. Every new discovery reaffirmed that I was exactly where I needed to be.

Despite my affection for Lahore, it was my passion for electrical engineering that eventually drew me away to UET for my bachelor’s degree. The pull of that first campus never waned, though, and a decade later I returned—not as a student, but as a representative of my company, Grayhat.

Stepping back into the familiar halls felt surreal. I’d come for COMPPEC EME NUST, a competition renowned for pushing students to master the latest technologies. What struck me most was the electric enthusiasm of the participants: professional, curious, and brimming with ideas—just like I had been all those years ago.

Arriving around 10:30 AM, I found our booth nearly set up, thanks to Saad Bazaz’s vibrant posters. As I arranged them just so, I realized something profound: for a lifelong “nerd” like me, this place still felt like home. And as visitors began to gather, I knew we were in for an unforgettable day.

Babelfish = Technical Marvel + Chaos!

We built Omni out of a desire to improve human communication across the world. This year, we planned to take a huge leap forward—a natively-built, realtime (under 2 second latency) translation system with an amazing UI/UX on an Apple Watch. Our target is to make it easy for American tourists to talk to locals, during their trips to Europe (Eurotrips, or summer getaways, as they call them).

Aarij, Abdullah and Ali (Triple A, as we call them), our FYP team, managed to deliver all them all and above.

You can't have amazing technology without some drama, can you? Well, we had plenty.

We had to rip apart another PC in BIOMISA (Thanks, professors!) to run our backend, as the primary PC we brought in (GMachine, God bless it) was not working properly with the university intranet.

We aimed to run the demo locally, hence a lot of networking drama had to be figured out.

We will be launching a commercialized version of babelfish soon. Stay tuned to our LinkedIn to find out the launch date.

The stall

Here's the part we love most... connecting with people.

Here’s how it all looked: for the next few hours, we were practically swarmed by students eyeballing our projects. I zeroed in on our crowd-favorite, Death by AI—a delightfully twisted prompt game where you get a life-or-death scenario, 60 seconds, and just 140 characters to craft a survival plan. The AI then grills your strategy and renders your fate. Nail it, and you live out a whole AI-generated saga celebrating your cleverness. Flub it, and you’re “unable to survive”—no refunds or do-overs!

Seeing teams huddle around, debating strategies with the intensity of chess grandmasters (only to discover the simplest idea usually wins), was both hilarious and humbling. I was thrilled—pride practically oozing from my smile—watching the next-gen problem-solvers give our AI a real run for its money. Plus, handing out free drinks and toffees? Instant crowd-pleaser.

What really surprised me was how curious everyone was about Grayhat’s work. Drawing on my four years at NESCOM NDC, I led an impromptu masterclass on career paths in Embedded Systems Design. These students arrived armed with lists of courses taken, projects completed, and dreams for the future. Guiding them—recommending key skills, current industry projects, and nifty tools—felt like paying forward everything I’ve learned. All in all, a fantastic reminder that amazing things happen when passion, curiosity, and a bit of friendly competition collide.

When the dust settled and our brains had nearly melted from all that AI-induced tension, it was time for the prize distribution ceremony—NUST style. We were graciously handed a token of appreciation. Awards flew out for everything from Speed Programming (blink and you’d miss a contestant typing at 200 WPM) to the nerve-racking 3-Minute Thesis, where presenters managed to pack PhD-level insights into alarm-clock territory.

But the real showstopper? A special youngsters’ category—yes, actual school kids, probably still trying to remember their locker combinations, were out there debugging code like seasoned pros. Watching them code circles around us veterans made my chest puff up so much I nearly needed an exhaust valve. As a proud Pakistani, seeing these pint-sized prodigies tackle algorithms with such gusto convinces me our future is in very capable hands (and possibly a few tiny circuit boards!).

All in all, it was a good 2 days and I for one, can't wait to go back again someday.

Onwards and Upwards!

Special thanks to

Grayhat
Dr Usman Akram and the team at BIOMISA: https://biomisa.org/
NUST College of Electrical & Mechanical Engineering
COMPPEC Host Team (Especially one kind young man named Anees, from the Media team, who randomly helped us move our stuff to our car)

RIP one of our 2k monitors, rest easy young device.