This summer, the Science Partnership Office hosted the second Aegis Professor Undergraduate Competition. Multidisciplinary teams from across the Faculty of Science and Engineering tackled real-world challenges, supported by our honorary Aegis Professors and academic staff.

The competition culminated in our Celebration Day on the 18th September, where eleven student teams came together to present their challenge solutions, in the hopes of winning our grand prize. The Aegis Professors, colleagues from across the faculty and the SPO team were hugely impressed with the level of creativity and dedication demonstrated by all teams.

Special congratulations to overall winners, Team 9, comprised of Aidan Meazzo, Archie Soares-Mullen, and Lara Grant, all from the School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology. Their project, which addressed the challenge of “Clean Drinking Water for All,” proposed an innovative filtration system to reduce arsenic contamination in Bangladesh’s water supply by up to 97%. Their outstanding work earned them the top prize of £3,000.

However, the competition was so close that this year the judges decided to award a second-place prize of £2000 to team 25, consisting of Boe Foster (Geographical Sciences), Parthiv Dey (Computer Science) and Isobel Hunt (Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering). Their project focused on how to ‘Reduce an Organisation’s Environmental Footprint’.

Check out the group photo of our talented participants, along with a snapshot of Aidan and Archie from the winning team with Head Judge and Aegis Professor John Thompson, and Annela Seddon, Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.