• Question: What would you do with the prize and would you like to meet the other engineers

    Asked by braderzzz123 to Amit, Emily, Joanne, Martin, Paige on 14 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by mullerj, baila007.
    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Yo! Braderzzz123…Another very good question!

      We are having an event in Bristol soon where I will get to meet the other engineers and I’m looking forward to that. 🙂

      What will I do with the prize money:

      I’m going to commission an engineering communication project for schools.

      Students who want to take part will:

      • Work as part of a Design Team team on a live project;
      • Write a Brief;
      • Research;
      • Brainstorm;
      • Write specifications;
      • Be creative;
      • Learn about Usability;
      • Learn about copyright and copyright law;
      • Further their knowledge on engineering and engineering career paths;
      • Improve upon effective writing and communication skills; and
      • Publish their own thoughts and ideas to communicate engineering to other young students, in a way that’s easy to understand

      The exact project will be decided by the Design Team but we are going to need:
      • Project Managers
      • Graphic Designers
      • Writers
      • Editors
      • Photographers
      • Illustrators
      • Artists
      • Proofreaders
      • Researchers & investigators
      • Ideas and solutions

      We may need…

      • Web Developers
      • Translators
      • FB App Writers
      • Moderators
      • Software Developers

      …that’s for the Design Team to decide and that’s YOU!

    • Photo: Amit Pujari

      Amit Pujari answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I would really like to organize hands on workshops at various schools. Workshops in which students can learn more about engineering by playing and experimenting and having fun!

      I would really like to meet the other engineers, speak to them about how they liked ‘I am an engineer, get me out of here’. Speak to them about questions they liked (like your question) etc…..

      If you want more details on what I would like to do with the prize money:
      I would like to set up hands on workshops which school kids will enjoy and have fun with! Workshops will be about engineering but especially about ‘biomedical engineering’. I believe not many school kids know ‘what biomedical engineering is and how fascinating it is?’

      School kids will build mock devices, machines or body parts. They will become biomedical engineers and will solve problems faced in the real world by biomedical engineers. This way kids will learn ‘what biomedical is and how it works?’ Also, kids often come up with bright ideas and all sorts of interesting questions, engineers like us can learn a great deal from kids too!

      In the end, students will be the judges of whether they liked the workshop. Students will decide what they would like the future workshops about? Best student engineer and engineering teams will win the prices (yes that’s you, school kids)! Student engineers from the winning team can get a chance to come and spend few hours in our Labs, speak to us, see what we actually do (I still need to get permission from our ‘Head of School/Institute’ on this, but this is the rough plan).

    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I would love to meet the other engineers. I have been invited to the event in Bristol, unfortunately it is a bit too far away for me to get there, but hopefully there will be other events where we can meet up.

      I’m getting more and more excited about what I want to do with the prize money. My plan is to buy as much lego / mechano / k’nex as I can and take it to schools to give students the opportunity to play with it and find out for themselves what can be done with a few cogs, gears and motors. Maybe we can set up design challenges to have races between the different types, build the biggest structure; the fastest car; the strongest bridge. There is so much you can do with engineering, and finding out what works and what doesn’t by just trying it out is the quickest way to find out.
      Playing with these sorts of toys is what got me interested in engineering, so hopefully it will be able to inspire other students to consider a career in engineering too.

    • Photo: Emily Bullen

      Emily Bullen answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I would like to allow students to see real places of work, and talk to real engineers. I think there’s nothing like seeing things yourself to make up your mind whether you’re interested or not. And the more things you see the more likely you are to be able to decide what you want to do as a career!
      That might mean funding some local schools bus trip to come and see the company I work for, or it might mean donating it to a charity that does something like this.

      I would love to meet the other engineers! there are people with really different roles here, and I am very curious 🙂 Unfortunately it’s not just next door to meet up…

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 17 Mar 2012:

      Hi braderzzz123! Very important question!

      I WOULD like to meet the other engineers!!! Unfortunately I think that I am the furthest away, being from the United States.

      If I am fortunate enough to win the monetary reward, I plan to set up an online website that will bring high school students closer to their local engineers and scientists.
      This website will be a permanent place for students to ask engineers and scientists questions about science and research. But even more than that, the website will be a place where scientists should write about their research and their current scientific projects, so that students can give their input and advice! You see, many scientists get soo bogged down in their work that they fail to see some of the most obvious and innovative applications of their work. Scientists need the ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking of high school students and young engineering and science students just as much as these students need scientists to foster their scientific skill sets.
      In addition, with the money from ‘I’m an Engineer, get me Out of Here!’ I hope to set up this site and arrange for sponsors to pay for high-school students to visit their local engineers and scientists at their local universities and biotech companies, and even for scientists to visit the students’ schools! I think such outreach is incredibly important. Science education is not a one way street! Scientists need the ideas and advice of young students to give their projects more out-of-the-lab and real-world applications.

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