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There’s been some good-natured competitive spirit sprinkled over the engineering sector during the past month or so, with a slew of high-profile awards and prizes being doled out in recognition of supreme achievements. It was rather fun to see the backslapping and self-regard combined with a certain element of controversy.
First there was the award of the £1 million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which was given with much fanfare to the five founding fathers of the internet. The correct decision, I couldn’t help but feel.
Yet others accused the judges of having taken the easy option, noting that whoever came second might have provoked more interest. All those high-powered judges, meeting for months on end for deliberations, only to come up with the founders of the internet as the eventual winners? I’m not sure that selecting the obvious choice is any grounds for criticism, but there you go – it all made for vigorous, heated debate.
Then there was the Great British Innovation vote, organised by the Royal Society and Engineering UK, among others, which asked the public to choose the most important innovation in science and technology from the past 100 years. At one stage Alec Issigonis’s Mini was top, ahead of Concorde, the discovery of penicillin, and the invention of LCD displays. While the car is one of the most important inventions, and the Mini is one of the most iconic models, could it really be considered more important than some other advances? Eventually Alan Turing’s universal machine, the theoretical basis for all computers, came top, marginally ahead of the Mini. But the debate is still raging, with many thousands of people having had their say.
Of course, who actually comes first doesn’t really matter that much as these types of contests are backwards looking. That said, they do play an incredibly important role in thrusting Stem-related achievements into the spotlight. The Queen Elizabeth prize received coverage in the media, here and abroad, equivalent to an advertising spend of several millions of pounds. That’s an amazing public relations coup, by anyone’s standards.
Indeed, the blanket coverage of the award, and the interest it provoked in blogs on the web, was symptomatic of the growing appeal of Stem, in the media and among the public. There are more Stem-related TV programmes than ever before, while education fairs like the Big Bang, held in London last month, attract many thousands of schoolchildren. For whatever reason, be it the Brian Cox effect, or a realisation that a Stem education offers better job prospects than many other “softer” subjects, public interest in what engineers and scientists do is at an all-time high.
Not too long ago when I told people upon meeting them that I was a journalist their interest was often piqued. Then when I said I worked for an engineering magazine, their eyes would glaze over. Not any more. Now they are likely to ask how we are going to stop the lights from going out or question what more can be done to alleviate the impact of climate change.
In short, these are good times to be an engineer. There is a growing respect for, interest in and understanding of the role performed by the profession. That can only lead to more youngsters choosing to study Stem-related subjects. If that happens in any good numbers, then awards such as the Queen Elizabeth Prize are worth their weight in gold.