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Budding young engineers from across the capital showcased their creative solutions to some of society’s problems at the final of this year’s Primary Engineer and Secondary Engineer London Leader Awards, hosted by Kingston University.<\/p>\n
The annual awards, run by Primary Engineer Programmes\u00a0\u2013<\/span>\u00a0a not-for-profit national programme promoting engineering careers for school children\u00a0\u2013<\/span>\u00a0gives young people the opportunity to design a solution to a problem, along with an explanation of why their idea should be made into a working prototype. Posed with the question, ‘if you were an engineer, what would you do?’,<\/strong> some 1,900<\/strong> children entered this year from across the London area, with 21 selected as winners.<\/p>\n Kingston University is the university partner for the\u00a0London Leaders Awards\u00a0and hosted the\u00a0awards presentation at its Penrhyn Road campus, along with a public exhibition of shortlisted and winning designs. Later this year, a team of technicians and students from the institution will take one of the pupil’s creations from concept to reality by building a working prototype. Among the winning designs in this year’s competition, which was supported by\u00a0Siemens, were inventions such as The Bicycle Sucker, The Beach Wheel Chair, Scanning Specs and the Hand ‘O’ Matic.<\/strong><\/p>\n Introducing children to innovative science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities from a young age was key to inspiring the next generation to take up careers in the industry, according to Dr Lucy Jones, Vice Dean of the University’s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing. \u00a0“The imagination and creativity shown by the school pupils has been an inspiration to all of our students and staff who have worked on making their designs a reality,”<\/strong> she said. “At Kingston we are committed to nurturing potential wherever it exists and supporting these budding young engineers to grow in confidence has been a privilege.”<\/strong><\/p>\n