INSIGHT

DESIGNING THE AWARD The James Dyson Award is an international and competition that encourages young people to FUTURES solve the problems of today through design engineering solutions. The Award has been running for 11 years, and is open to current and recently graduated design engineering students in 20 different countries. “The thing I find most exciting about the Award is that we are able to give young JENNA BLANTON and inventors the exposure to the public that they deserve,” Jenna Blanton enthuses. “A lot of hard work goes JAMES DYSON FOUNDATION into designing and engineering a new product. Giving young people and their ideas exposure on a public platform can be life-changing for some of the participants in the programme.”

The James Dyson Foundation aims to bridge the This year’s US winner is NeoVent, a low-cost neonatal engineering skills gap in the US by providing ventilator that enables healthcare workers around the world to deliver ventilation treatment to premature infants educational opportunities for young people. Jenna in respiratory distress. The Canadian award went to a Blanton, Manager of the Foundation in North redesigned washing machine, Drumi. The Drumi is a foot powered washing machine that requires no energy and emits America discusses how empowering teachers can zero carbon emissions. help cultivate young engineers

AS A YOUNG girl I was always outside, digging in the dirt and just asking in university through the James Dyson Award and, in Chicago, we questions. I was (and still am!) fascinated by the scientific world, but I fund students enrolled in university programmes through bursaries actually became a scientist by accident when I was 18 years old. I had and scholarships. a friend at university who was taking a higher biology course and suggested that I might be interested too. I was not going for science TEACHING DESIGN ENGINEERING at the time, but took the course and fell in love and saw a career. We design our programmes so that they will be suitable for classrooms For similarly curious young people, I don’t want any more accidents across all demographics in the US. At the moment, however, we work like mine! most intensely with teachers in Chicago, the third largest school district in the US. Throughout Chicago, we send Dyson engineers into The same was the case for James Dyson. He felt he fell into a career in classrooms to engage with students and teach workshops. One of our engineering, having originally studied . That’s why in 2002 most successful programmes has been our rapid prototyping workshop, he set up his Foundation in the UK, with the aim to inspire young people where we set students an open design brief and ask them to come up to study engineering and science. The James Dyson Foundation now has with a design solution and within two hours. extensive engineering programming across the UK, working with 2,000 schools and top universities. We also send kits of engineering design curriculum to teachers throughout the country. The kits take thousands of students through the The James Dyson Foundation was launched in the US in 2011, aiming engineering design process by encouraging them to tear Dyson machines to replicate the success it has had in the UK. Not only do we encourage apart. We want to lift the lid on the R&D department at Dyson and school pupils, but we also support young designers and engineers excite students about what it is like to be an engineer. The curriculum

1 INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION FROM HOOVERS TO HAND DRYERS

Dyson began around 30 years ago when James Dyson tore the bag from his sluggish vacuum cleaner and replaced it with a cardboard cyclone. In doing so he created the first no loss of suction vacuum cleaner. Years of work and 5,127 later, gets students to ask questions about why Dyson’s DC01 vacuum cleaner finally rolled off the production line in 1993. Within 18 Dyson engineers made the decisions they months it was the biggest selling vacuum cleaner in UK. did in the creation of Dyson technology and products. Ultimately we are providing industry Today, Dyson has over 1,500 scientists and engineers specialising in diverse fields such relevant resources to teach engineering well in as fluid, mechanical, electrical and software engineering, and even includes a team of the classroom. microbiologists. The company holds over 3,000 patents for more than 500 inventions, and nearly US $4.7 million is invested in R&D at Dyson each week. We welcome feedback on our programmes from schools (we practice the engineering The first stages of R&D take place in Malmesbury, UK, where Dyson’s incredible design process ourselves!), and are therefore engineers continuously improve everyday objects including hand dryers, fans and continuously improving the curriculums we lighting. In 2014, an investment plan was announced to inject US $391 million into the offer. Feedback so far has shown teachers are Malmesbury site, which will double the UK’s Dyson R&D capacity and create 3,000 pleased that James Dyson and the Foundation new engineering jobs. Dyson is also continuing its support of the UK R&D landscape feel strongly about giving back and exposing through partnerships with 20 top British universities. more young people to engineering careers.

BRIDGING THE ENGINEERING SKILLS GAP on about engineering, we show them the opportunities that this field can The James Dyson Foundation’s work specifically addresses the lack of provide for them. engineers in the US – or the engineering gap. As a country, we simply are not producing enough engineers to meet the numbers that are The James Dyson Foundation is working to demanded by booming technology and engineering industries (this create a cutting-edge model of engineering problem is amplified by the fact that just 18 per cent of engineering education. We plan to take that model, validate students in the US are female). In our view, the skills gap can be it with research and expand our curricula addressed by getting young people interested in engineering at an early throughout the country, serving as a blueprint age, regardless of their background. Specifically, we address the crucial for how industry can cultivate future innovators. question, ‘How can a student become an engineer without knowing what one does or having never met one?’ We work hard to change young people’s assumptions about what an engineer is. By exciting them early WWW.JAMESDYSONFOUNDATION.ORG

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