Overview We cordially invite you to participate in this event, organised as part of techFEST'26 – Annual Technical Festival of SLIET. Showcase your talent, compete with the sharpest minds and earn your moment of glory. About techFEST'26 techFEST'26 is North India's premier technical festival, organised by Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology (SLIET), Longowal, Punjab. This is a paid opportunity with the early-bird packages mentioned below. Select Your Registration Package Registration for the techFEST’26 package is compulsory for accommodation and other perks, while participation in individual events is free*.
Note: Registration is mandatory for participation. Fee once paid is non-refundable. About the Event The Aqua-Epoch is a machine learning and web development competition under SLIET Longowal's Annual Technical Fest, techFEST'26. Participants are tasked with solving critical water quality challenges by analysing physical and chemical data, training predictive models to assess water potability and pH levels, and developing a REST API-powered web application for real-time predictions. Key Objectives & Tasks Task
A (Classification): Build predictive models (e.g., Random Forest, XGBoost) to classify water as Safe (1) or Unsafe (0) while handling class imbalances.
Task B (Regression): Predict continuous pH values from water metrics.
Web Application: Build a validated UI and a REST API backend to return real-time model predictions. Eligibility & Team Rules
Eligible Students: Enrolled in any Diploma or Undergraduate programme (all branches).
Team Size: Standard teams of 2 to 3 members. Solo participation or teams of up to 4 members are permitted exclusively for 1st-year UG and Diploma students. Rounds & Submissions Round 1 (Technical Deck) PDF submission detailing Data Preprocessing, EDA, Model Architecture and System Flow. Round 1 is the mandatory technical evaluation stage for Aqua-Epoch. Teams must submit a detailed project report to demonstrate their ML solution, system architecture and technical approach. Submitting this report is strictly mandatory; missing this step will result in immediate disqualification, and the team will not advance to the next round. PDF Submission Checklist Submit a single
Title Page: Event Name (Aqua-Epoch), Project Title, Team Name/Members, Date, Contact Info and
SPOC: Prakshaale.
Problem Statement: Brief summary of the core challenge, objectives and predictive tasks.
Assumptions: Key assumptions on data availability, feature usage and system design.
ML Tasks Description: Framing and targets for Classification (water safety prediction) and Regression (pH prediction).
Venue
Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology, Longowal
Laungowal, India
Approach: Preprocessing and feature engineering, model selection/training methodology, and an overview of system architecture (frontend, backend and inference flow).
Results & Insights: Performance summary for both tasks, feature importance, key observations and limitations.
Appendix (Optional): Extra plots, dashboards, system diagrams or references. Round 2 (Live Prototype) On-site demonstration of the live deployed web application and model predictions. In this final offline/online round, shortlisted teams must present their ML solution, demonstrate the live working prototype and defend their design choices before the judging panel. Participation in Round 2 is mandatory to compete for the final podium and prize pool. Key Elements to Present Live
System Demo: Showcase the working end-to-end flow, from the frontend interface to backend inference for both classification and regression.
Technical Defense: Explain your core ML pipeline, feature engineering choices and model accuracy metrics.
Architecture & Scalability: Highlight your system design, pipeline speed, real-time performance and current limitations.
Q&A Session: Defend your project decisions, trade-offs and future improvements directly to the judges. Rewards & Certification Top 3 performers receive winner certificates and cash prizes. All non-disqualified participants receive participation certificates. About the Festival – techFEST'26 at SLIET techFEST'26 is the annual technical festival of Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology (SLIET), Longowal, Punjab – a deemed-to-be university under the Ministry of Education, Government of India. Established in 1989, accredited with Grade A by NAAC, SLIET spreads across a lush 451-acre campus with 11 departments and more than 5,000 students. With a legacy of over 28 years, techFEST'26 – themed 'Technology and Sciences for Sustainable Earth' – features 50+ events across 11 clubs and a total prize pool of Rs 5,00,000+, along with workshops, exhibitions, guest lectures and a grand cultural evening. Festival Highlights at techFEST'26 50+ technical, non-technical and cultural events across 11 clubs Total prize pool worth Rs 5,00,000+ Grand cultural evening and pro-shows Hands-on workshops, exhibitions and expert guest lectures Early-bird registration packages for participants