RAEngWinner

Demi was voted the winner of Millimetre Zone in March 2018. Here she writes about how her £500 prize money helped engage young people from underrepresented backgrounds in engineering, as well as offering interview training and CV feedback. If you’re an engineer who’d like funding to support your own STEM outreach activities, apply now for I’m an Engineer, Get me out of here at imanengineer.org.uk/engineers I donated the total amount of prize money to the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK) to raise more awareness of their Making Engineering Hot (MEH) Programme. As an active member of AFBE-UK, I wanted this programme to be very successful. The programme aims at raising the aspirations of young people from underrepresented and less advantaged backgrounds, helping them to consider STEM opportunities within their communities and the wider world. With its after–school and weekend sessions comprising of innovative visual learning, numeracy and employability projects, the Making Engineering Hot (MEH) programme introduced and engaged school children to the world of engineering over a nine-month period. It was led by project coordinators (all … Continue reading →

Stacey was voted the winner of the Smart Materials Zone in June 2017. Here she writes about using the £500 prize money to If you’re an engineer who’d like funding to support your own STEM outreach activities, apply now for I’m an Engineer, Get me out of here at imanengineer.org.uk/engineers I knew I wanted to spend the prize winnings on encouraging students to study and work in STEM fields through engagement, inspiration and developing their STEM skills.  Tall order with £500! So I teamed up with Tech for Life Newcastle to organise an event which would include practical workshops and a panel session.  Most importantly it needed to be led by people working in STEM. I believe it’s really important for the students and parents to meet and talk to real life scientists and engineers. So we set about organising the event, approaching our joint networks to get support and resources. We decided the … Continue reading →

Emma was voted the winner of the Ampere Zone in March 2017. Here she writes about using the £500 prize money to run materials workshops in schools, involving Lego! If you’re an engineer who’d like funding to support your own STEM outreach activities, apply now for I’m an Engineer, Get me out of here at imanengineer.org.uk/engineers The prize money has allowed me to develop a Materials Workshop for local schools in the area. The workshop is now part of the outreach activities at Lockheed Martin UK and the outreach team will continue to use it. I hope that we can help more students realise that scientists and engineers are normal people. I bought all the Lego with the prize money from I’m an Engineer! Well, that and a few other things. Here is me posing with some of the resources for the Materials Workshop I developed for local schools in the area. The workshop … Continue reading →

Stuart was voted the winner of Robotics Zone in March 2016. Here he reports on how he used his £500 prize to make his own STEM outreach project happen. If you’re an engineer who’d like funding to support your own STEM outreach activities, apply now for I’m an Engineer, Get me out of here at imanengineer.org.uk/engineers After a rather slow start my miniROV kits have had their first shakedown run at the hands of the next generation of budding engineers! I used the winnings from the Robotics zone of I’m an Engineer 2016 to buy components for building underwater robots or Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). The kits were based on an existing design from Robert Gordon’s University (RGU) which was adapted to make them reusable, so that the money went further and could be used with more pupils. Once all the individual components were bought it was time to dust off the old … Continue reading →

Nicola was voted the winner of the Environment Zone in March 2013. Nicola and two of her PhD colleagues run The Energy Community, a website raising awareness of how you can save money on your energy bills. The site aims to make energy advice simple and easy to understand, and also run energy workshops and support lessons in local schools. Nicola’s prize money was used to develop an interactive game on the site, ‘Energy Explorer’. In it you can explore the different rooms of a house, interacting with different objects and reading about how to save energy. Follow the Energy Community blog for more of Nicola’s work raising awareness about energy saving.