7th August 2012 New Delhi, India

Spotlight on engineering

There have been so many announcements around engineering recently that we thought we would bring you an engineering special!

Firstly there was the announcement on 16 July from the Royal Academy of Engineering that Ratan Tata, the Chairman of Tata Sons, has been elected as one of three Honorary Fellows this year along side Professor Sir John Beddington and Sir Paul Nurse. He is joining a Fellowship of the UK’s world-class engineers and Honorary Fellows who have made exceptional contributions to engineering.engineering

This is further recognition of Tata Group’s engineering success following Jaguar Land Rover winning the 2012 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award for the innovation of the Range Rover Evoque in June. The MacRobert Award is the UK’s longest running and most prestigious engineering prize. It is regarded as the most coveted in the industry, rewarding outstanding innovation with proven commercial success and benefit to society.

There have also been announcements recently for some engineering prizes open for nominations. The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering is an exciting new global award. It will honour an individual or a team of up to 3 engineers for an achievement in ground-breaking innovation that has helped to change the world. An eminent panel of judges, including Narayana Murthy CBE founder of Infosys, will select the winner of the £1million prize, which will be presented by Her Majesty, the Queen in 2013. Nominations are open until 14 September 2012 at 17:00hrs GMT.

Finally there is the IET JA Lodge Award, celebrating biomedical engineering excellence for promising early-career electrical engineers. The award is open to engineers working in the field of research and development within biomedical engineering. They must be in their final year of a PhD programme (or within 3 years of completely their PhD) or for engineers in industry, within 6 years of qualifying from their last degree.  Submissions are being accepted until 31 August 2012 and the winner of the award will be granted not only a prize of £500 (approx. INR 43,000) but also a one year membership to the IET and a certificate of recognition.