On International Women in Engineering Day, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is proud to announce that for the first time, the Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in its UK-wide CityZen Award are all female students
Teams from schools in Scotland, Kent, and Leicester, took home the top three prizes in the national CityZen competition.
The three winning ideas focused on renewable energy, improving local safety, and using more sustainable materials in infrastructure. The winning students will each receive prize money to be split between themselves and their school for STEM resources and are invited to a celebratory lunch at the ICE headquarters in Westminster with ICE senior vice president, David Porter.
Each of the winning teams will receive prize money of up to £1,000 and an equal amount for school STEM resources
The Gold Award went to ‘The Deltas’ from Bearsden Academy, Bearsden, Scotland. Students, Zara Manson (16-years old), Mridhula Anand (16-years old), Mira Stankovic (17-years old) and Konstantina Styliara (17-years old).
The judges loved their idea to repurpose a local mine complex into a geothermal power plant. This would provide renewable energy for people living in Kirkintilloch, Scotland. The team built a comprehensive case for how this would reduce energy bills for the local community and be kinder to the planet. They presented their idea with a compelling and entertaining short, animated film.
The Deltas said: “The CityZen competition has been an experience we will never forget. We had so much fun and have made a plethora of cherished memories of working together as teammates. This enabled us to create even stronger bonds and allowed us to grow closer. By working as a team, we combined each of our strengths to create a complete project we are extremely proud of. CityZen has made us braver, more confident people and has encouraged us to chase more new exciting opportunities”.
Peter Strain, Design & Technology teacher at Bearsden Academy who supported the students involved in CityZen, said: “We at Bearsden Academy are incredibly proud of all of the teams that took part in CityZen this session, in particular our winning team. They are a credit to themselves, to Bearsden Academy, and to the vital cause of championing women in STEM. This competition has given these bright young women the opportunity to shine in a way they truly deserve.”
Team Rocket and Groot, Livy Leonard (17-years old) and Yasemin Maras (18-years old), from Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar School, Kent, won the Silver Award for their ideas on roundabout safety.
Livy and Yasemin pitched several different ideas to help reduce the amount of car crashes on roundabouts in their local area. The judges were impressed with their creative video and the different solutions suggested including removing large trees, building indication signs to remind drivers to indicate, adding extra lines to show which lanes to enter for each exit, and creating a clear cycle lane.
The Bronze Award went to team Mechanicus from Leicester High School for Girls, made up of Jasmin Nathanie (17-years old) and Simreat Sanghera (16-years old). Their winning idea was to decrease the carbon footprint of new homes by repurposing raw material from landfill through pyrolysis, the chemical process where heat breaks down compounds without oxygen.
Judges were impressed that the team not only pitched their idea in their submission, but that they experimented and created a mixture for bricks using pyrolysis themselves.
What are the ICE CityZen competitions?
The ICE CityZen programme includes the ICE CityZen Award and the ICE CityZen Pollution Control Challenge.
The ICE CityZen Award aims to encourage more young people to study civil engineering at university or apprenticeship level.
It is a two-stage competition for 16-to-18-year-olds. In the first stage, students compete in the ICE CityZen online game which involves overcoming a series of civil-engineering-inspired challenges. For example, students must explore the carbon footprint and sustainability of each choice they make in the game, whilst also considering budget requirements and community needs.
In the second stage, students apply their learnings by identifying a problem in their local area and suggesting a solution. They then present this idea in a video. Previous winners have suggested everything from redesigning traffic patterns to address road congestion at school pick-up times to regenerating a coal power plant.
The ICE CityZen Pollution Control online game for 14-to-16-year-olds, helps young people understand the positive impact of civil engineers. Students are challenged to solve a river pollution problem by researching the causes. Players explore the environmental, social, financial, and political aspects of civil engineering.
For the first time this academic year, two teams from the same school were prize winners
Team JIR- also frmo from Bearsden Academy, Glasgow- was announced as one of the top three teams in the CityZen Pollution Control challenge. Team JJR from Bearsden Academy included students, Jamie More (15-years-old), Ross Anderson (15-year-old), and Jamie Gallagher (15-years-old).
Séan Harris, the ICE’s deputy director general and director of membership, said: “How fantastic that three all-girl teams took the prizes in this year’s CityZen competition. I can’t think of a better way to illustrate that civil engineering is an inclusive, exciting career for anyone who wants to solve the problems that society faces.
“The industry needs diverse thinking, and these students have it in spades. If we can attract this type of talent in our industry, the future of civil engineering is bright indeed!”.
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