From Birdcage Walk

The latest in our ongoing series of updates about activities at the Institution.

Dear Member,

Sitting here in the heart of England at Silverstone race circuit surrounded by thousands of engineering students taking part in Formula Student is truly sitting at the heart of our Institution. Improving the world through engineering by developing professional engineers can have no better incarnation than our international showcase of business and engineering skills. As you may have seen, our overall winner this year in Class 1 was MoRe Modena Racing from Italy. Coming in at 202kg it was not the lightest car, but it featured a highly refined suspension system and by popular acclaim the event’s ‘Most Entertaining Driver’. 

Importantly however we had a winner from our President’s university too when Edinburgh took away the autonomous vehicle (FS AI) overall prize. Navigating between yellow cones on its right and blue cones on its left, the vehicle didn’t yet achieve the speeds of Modena, but with an eerily silent electric traction it is a very impressive demonstration of what is to come. Overall there were 33 category winners across the competition and we congratulate all of them on making Formula Student 2019 such a great success. You can see and read more about their achievements on our website.

This was the grand finale of our Summer of Challenges that has seen other Challenge winners over the last month from Germany, Pakistan and the UK. FH Aachen won the Railway Challenge in their third year of competition, beating other teams from Europe.  Earlier in the month, Pakistan’s NUST University from Islamabad had taken away the UAS Challenge prize and were greeted back home as heroes with the Governor of Sindh province making a special visit to congratulate the winning team.  We hope too that the local dignitaries in Coventry were equally impressed by the work of ‘Team Prodigies’ in designing a water lifting system to irrigate hanging baskets. This may not seem on the scale of innovative rail traction or exploring the potential of drones, but ask anyone in their more senior years and they will confirm that the simple act of lifting heavy weights above shoulder height becomes increasingly difficult as we get older.  It’s a simple but great example of ‘improving the world through engineering’. 

We thank all of the teams in all of our Challenges this year for the optimism they give us for the future.

Thank you,

Colin Brown

Chief Executive

• Find out more about the Governance and Finance reviews
• Follow previous posts "From Birdcage Walk"