London Leaders Award 2017

On a glorious sunny day for the second year running, London Leaders Award 2017 was held at the UCL Chadwick Building. This year was the first time a pupils’ invention was unveiled. The lucky winner from last year Mihika Sharma invented ‘The Smart Stick’ a Bluetooth device in the form of a stick that helps blind people navigate when near obstacles by vibrating to warn them. Mihika was lucky enough to have been selected by UCL engineers to make her idea come to life!

The ceremony was packed with over 100 guests and 200 inventions that pupils had submitted from the London area.  With a total of 19 winners and 34 highly commended, the quality of work was superb and we were spoilt for choice.

Once again Prof Mark Miodownik, Materials Engineer joined us as a guest speaker, which is always a pleasure. We also had Professor Polina Bayvel Head of the Optical Networks Group, UCL,  Carolyn Griffiths President Institution of Mechanical Engineers CEng FIMechE FREng, and Lucy Bland UK Schools and Education Intern, Siemens PLC, who were all blown away by the ingenuity on show.

The overall winner was Elizabeth Sperotto a Year 4 pupil at the James Allen’s Preparatory School in Dulwich, London. Elizabeth, after hearing Dina Ibrahim from UCL talk about engineering, has conceptualised “The Robotic Earthworm” which is a device that repairs burst water pipes of any size from the inside by use of water-activated resin squeezed out of the machine’s segmented body when it locates a crack/split/hole in the pipe.

We would like to thank UCL and Siemens for all their support with this project.

To find all out all the winners from London please click here