The new scholarships, which were launched this year to encourage and recognise high achievement in internships overseas from international students, saw an extremely strong set of applications from a diverse choice of countries and industries. The applications ranged from a student working with Arup in Beijing on innovative air conditioning systems in very tall buildings, to one designing social media Android Apps with a company in Delhi, and another working on Aerospace composites in Singapore.
This initiative is one of a set of enterprises launched by the Faculty of Engineering’s Industrial Liaison Office that seek to build on the Faculty’s strong links with industry to benefit home and overseas students from across the Faculty.
Professor Nishan Canagarajah, commenting on the scholarships, said: “All of these students produced terrific scholarship applications, each one of which represented internships that will be a hugely positive step for their future career.
“I’m particularly proud that our students are going all over the world doing such substantial engineering work during their time away from University, and we hope that all students will be inspired by the great example being set here. This scheme is also helping to develop our increasingly important relationships with engineering industry overseas.”
Lynn Guo, Human Resources Officer at Arup Beijing, added: “This scheme has been a great success as it gave us a couple of excellent interns, in Beijing and Hong Kong, who both got strong evaluations from their discipline leaders. I'm delighted that they were successful in winning scholarships as a result of their work with Arup. I sincerely hope they will join Arup after they graduate from Bristol.”
Rohit Kumar Sahu, Head of Human Resources at Hughes Systique India, said: “It was great to be able to offer an internship to an excellent student from Bristol, and the internship was of real benefit to our company. Siddharth helped us significantly with the design of an Android App and we think it was of benefit to him as well.”
The scholarship winners were enthusiastic about the benefits of their internships, one commented: “This serves as a motivation to keep pursuing for the excellence both in academic study and professional career.” Another said: “I gained an appreciation of how the skills learned from my degree are applicable in a commercial environment.”
One student thought that he learned that “you have to take the initiative”, while others stressed the breadth of experience “the internship was an invaluable insight into how a successful manufacturing business is run, from the shop floor all the way up to corporate” and how it contributed to self-belief “winning this scholarship has given me a new confidence in my career”.