YOUNG female engineers are being sought to share their groundbreaking ideas for inventions that could shape the future of the country and the world.
The James Dyson Award, celebrating its 20th anniversary, is seeking inspiring ideas to solve everyday challenges to the world’s most pressing issues, calling for current students or recent graduates to submit problem-solving ideas that could make a real difference to people’s lives.
Women make up less than a fifth of the UK’s engineering workforce, with the industry facing a significant engineering skills gap, and increasing female participation is seen as a key solution.
The awards are helping to tackle that imbalance, with previous winners going onto develop their ideas and make them a reality.
Like Solveiga Pakštaitė, who developed Mimica in 2014, which helps provide accurate freshness information on perishable foods, helping to reduce unnecessary waste. Since winning she has gone onto work with some of the biggest supermarkets in the country, including Tesco, is expanding her creation into the seafood and meat industry.
So far, the award has supported more than 400 student inventions with £1m in prize money and a global platform.
Those who progress to the final stages and are selected by James Dyson as the global winners will claim a prize of £30,000 and a chance to gain international media exposure, providing a springboard to commercialise their inventions.
To find out more, go to www.jamesdysonaward.org.
