08/10/2002
Seven young engineers win Panasonic Trust Fellowships
Seven young engineers have won prestigious £7,000 bursaries from the Royal Academy of Engineering Panasonic Trust to enable them to start MSc courses in environmental engineering at universities round the UK this month.
“We had 32 applications this year and they were so good that we have made seven awards this year instead of the usual five,” says Robin Bond FREng, Chairman of the Panasonic Trustees. “It is a pleasure to see young engineers so interested in sustainable development and to be able to support them in their career development.”
Gonna build a house
Dawn Ward-Craner, 34, will use her bursary to study Renewable Energy Systems Technology at Loughborough University – she is particularly keen to work on wave power in the future. Dawn came to engineering as a mature student after designing and building her own house in Ireland. “It took four years and I learnt so much about using mathematics in a practical way for design and choosing materials,” she says. “And I now have such an appreciation for all the designers out there who have done the ground work in so many subject areas.”
Dawn followed up this experience with a first-class degree in mechanical engineering at Nottingham Trent University, including a placement year at Triumph Designs, modelling and designing engine parts for motorcycles. “I will try my hand at any kind of designing,” she says, “from clothes and furniture to gardening and go-carts – I have also restored several Morris Minors over the years!”
Scottish Ecovillage
Andrew Oldroyd, 29, has been helping to create a new village, as a project manager for the Tweed Valley Ecovillage group near Peebles in the Scottish Borders. The idea of the ecovillage is to build a small group of affordable houses and create a real community between them. All of the homes will be built using best practice green techniques to make them as environmentally friendly as possible, with some of the homes being self-built by the eventual owners. “We have now got a potential site for our village and we’re working on fundraising to help the project go forward,” says Andy. “Sustainable settlements like this have worked very successfully, particularly in Denmark where the idea was developed.”
Andy is going to use his Panasonic Trust Fellowship to study for an MSc in Environmental Sustainability at the University of Edinburgh, which should be a great help to his work with the ecovillage. He did his first degree in Engineering with Business Management and European Studies at the University of Strathclyde and taught engineering there for six years.
International development
Adam Berthoud, 26, will use his bursary to join the MSc course in Engineering for Development at Southampton University. “I can’t tell you how happy I was to be selected for this Fellowship,” he says. “It will allow me to pursue my career aim of coordinating rural infrastructure development projects in the world’s most disadvantaged communities, without having to worry about the financial burden of the course.”
Lancaster University chemistry graduate Adam knows a bit about international development, as a former VSO science teacher in Zambia, where he organised a fundraising event, Pedal for Kasempa, to restore his school’s water supply. He also wrote a ‘Chemistry Teacher’s Handbook’, a practical teaching aid for teachers working in developing countries with limited resources.
Urban world
Claire Mitcham, 31, got a first-class degree in town planning at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and has been working for the last three years with the World Health Organisation in Copenhagen as part of WHO’s Centre for Urban Health. She helped to manage the Healthy Cities network and developed and promoted WHO’s Healthy Urban Planning initiative and also managed SAVE II, a twinning project on cycling in six European cities.
Claire will use her Panasonic Trust Fellowship to study for an MA in Urban Design at the University of the West of England near Bristol, returning close to her Gloucestershire roots as she attended Katherine, Lady Berkeley’s Comprehensive School in Wotton-under-Edge.
Renewable energy
Three of the Panasonic Trust Fellows are using their bursaries to attend the MSc course in Renewable Energy and the Environment at Reading University. Clare Hanmer, 37, has a first-class engineering degree from Cambridge University and has spent 15 years as a process engineer and manager with BOC Gases. Andrew Baldock, 32, also graduated from Cambridge in Chemical Engineering and is a food science specialist, most recently as Manufacturing Manager at Batchelors Factory in Ashford, overseeing the production of Cup-A-Soup and Savoury Rice.
Bath University mechanical engineering graduate Jamie Wray, 24, has been working as an environmental advisor at the Power Division of engineering consultancy W S Atkins.
ends
- The Panasonic Trust Fellowships were endowed by a £500,000 gift from Panasonic UK Ltd in 1997 to assist students on full-time Masters courses in environment-related subjects. The Panasonic Trust itself was founded in 1984, managed by the Royal Academy of Engineering, and has enabled over 900 young engineers to take part-time modular Masters courses to update their skills – it was one of the first grant schemes actively to promote continuing professional development.
- The Royal Academy of Engineering aims to pursue, encourage and maintain excellence across the whole field of engineering in order to promote the advancement of the science, art and practice of engineering for the benefit of the public. The Academy comprises the UK’s most eminent engineers and is able to use their combined wealth of knowledge and experience to meet its objectives.
For more information please contact:
Jane Sutton at the Royal Academy of Engineering
tel: 020 7227 0536 (direct), email: [jane...@...org.uk]
