Kathmandu, January 30:

A team of Nepali students from the Institute of Engineering (IoE), Tribhuvan University, bagged the fourth prize in the International Techno Fest-2007 organised by the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai on January 26-28.

The 18-member Nepali team led by Mahadev Panta had reached the semi-finals in the Full Throttle After Born Competition, which is a head-to-head race of remote control cars.

The team returned to Kathmandu today. Fifty Indian teams and a Nepali team had participated in the competition.

“Our car had clutch and brake problems. We could not reach final due to lack of time to repair the car,” Panta told this daily.

He said their participation in the international technological festival remained very fruitful for Nepali students. “Such programmes widen the scope of technology,” Panta added, “We observed technological advances in the world closely and gathered new knowledge.”

“The knowledge accumulated in the fest will be helpful in the development of automobile technology in Nepal,” he said. “It has also encouraged us to implement our knowledge of engineering studies in practice,” he added. The Engineering College of Pune bagged the first prize in the competition.

In 2004, Nepali team was awarded the first runner up position. In 2005, Nepali students got the best mechanism award.