In order to create interest among students in the fields of programming, technology, robotics etc various competitions are organsied. There is no participation fees so it does not cost you financially to take part. Following are among some of them.

Yarl Geek Challenge

Yarl Geek’s Challenge is an annual premier technology competition open to all youth.The intent of the competition is to nurture IT skills, innovation and creativity, fostering a spirit of entrepreneurship among the entrants. The best and the brightest young minds will be invited to join hands to utilize technology, taking on some of the world’s toughest problems. While competing with their peers, participants will have the opportunity to work alongside industrial practitioners, gain valuable industrial experience, make new friends, expose their abilities to the global IT industry and transform their ideas into reality.

NBQSA

National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA formerly National Best Quality Software Awards) organised by the BCS the Chartered Institute for IT - Sri Lanka section is held annually for Tertiarary Student Projects since 2003. This Award is presented to the most innovative ICT software and/or hardware project from students of Institutions of Higher Learning. Any ICT project that is conducted by a student or a group of students who are formally enrolled in an institution of higher-learning, such as college or university, excluding Master and Doctorate programs can take part at NBQSA. Evaluation is conducted in stages, where first round is usually held at the applicant's university and the final round held centrally, mostly at UCSC. Top three student projects are recognised as Gold, Silver and Bronze and are nominated and funded partially or fully to take part at APICTA (Asia Pacific ICT Awards). Most of the final round applicants receive awards (i.e. at least Merit Award).

APICTA

The Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) provide networking and product benchmarking opportunities to ICT innovators and entrepreneurs in the region. The program is designed to stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer, and offer business matching opportunities via exposure to venture capitalists and investors. APICTA is hosted by one of the member countries. APICTA recognise the Winner of each category. Merit awards are sometimes awarded. Sri Lanka has participated in APCITA since 2003. First APICTA was held in 2001. Winners of NBQSA are nominated to participate at APICTA.

Imagine Cup

Imagine Cup is an annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. which brings together young technologists worldwide to help resolve some of the world's toughest challenges. Imagine Cup has several categories, such as Software Design, Embedded Development, Web Development, Project Hoshimi, IT Challenge, Algorithm, Photography, Short Film, Interface Design. Winner of the local country event participate at the international event. 2013 local event finals will be held at UCSC.

IEEEXtreme

IEEEXtreme is a global challenge in which teams of IEEE student members – supported by an IEEE Student Branch, advised and proctored by an IEEE member – compete in a 24-hour time span against each other to solve a set of programming problems.
UCSC students first took part at this competition in 2011 (IEEEXtreme 5.0). It was a learning process for them where the top team was placed 39th in the country, 77 in the R10 region and 216 world wide.

Google Summer Code

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers post-secondary student developers ages 18 and older stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects over a three month period. 2011 was the first instance of participation.

e-Swabhimani - National Best e-Content Award

The e-Swabhimani is an initiative of the Information Communication technology agency of Sri Lanka aimed at recognizing excellence in digital content creation. It is expected that this national award would stimulate a greater interest in the development of a wide range of content and services that would serve the needs of society. The e-Swabhimani was launched in 2009. The e-Swabhimani Award process is being conducted along the lines of the World Summit Award and has input from the Digital Empowerment Foundation if India as the Knowledge Partner to ensure that the jury process conforms to international standards. The award is a stepping stone to other regional and international awards with all short listed submissions being nominated to the Manthan Award South Asia.

Manthan Award

The Manthan Awards are granted for projects that aim at raising the standard of life of people,especially the rural masses by the use of Information and Communication Technology. The Award is an initiative of the Digital Empowerment Foundation with strategic support from the Department of Information Technology, Government of India and the World Summit Award Austria. With effect from 2008 the Manthan Award was extended to other countries in the region and is now the Manthan Award South Asia.

The Award recognizes the best e-Content for Development and this year applications were invited from e-Content innovators, practitioners and creators across South Asian Countries. Individual participants, organizations as well as individuals seconding nominations for grassroots practitioners from countries in the region were also invited to apply. The requirement was that they be engaged in pioneering work in developing, creating and disseminating digital content, be it online or offline, for grassroots empowerment and development in daily life.The theme of this year’s Manthan Awards was the use of electronic media content for Development in South East Asia. This year greater emphasis was laid on projects that apply information communication technology to raise the standard of life rural people. Sri Lanka participants are nominated by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) from among the e-Swabhimani winners.

mBillionth Award

The mBillionth Award is a dedicated platform to explore the latent potential of mobile & telecom sector across 8 countries in South Asia.

World Summit Award mobile

The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global activity to select and promote the world's best e-Content and most innovative ICT applications. It offers a worldwide platform for all who value the creative use of ICTs and who are committed to making today’s information society more inclusive. The World Summit Award Mobile first took placed in 2010 to honour excellence in m-Content and innovative application creation. The Grand Jury selects 40 winners of the eight WSA-mobile categories. WSA was started as an initiative by the Republic of Austria as a contribution to the United Nations World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) and is organised by the International Center for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg.

Inter University Innovations Championship

This competition is held since in 2010 and is organized by SLASSCOM and Motorola Solutions. It involves training programmes conducted by the staff of the Motorola Solutions and runs over a period of 6-7 months. Competition focus on building human resource capacity in Mobile Technologies; develop entrepreneurial skills; and promote innovation among students by exposing their innovative and creative skills.