The Engineering for People Design Challenge is an award winning initiative delivered by Engineers Without Borders UK. The Challenge is embedded in undergraduate engineering courses and gives students the opportunity to learn and practice the ethical, environmental, social and cultural aspects of engineering design. Now in its 7th year, it has become the leading student engineering design challenge in the country.

This year, for the first time, UCL participated in the Engineers Without Border Challenge, which was embedded into the Environmental Engineering Minor, coordinated by Dr Ilan Adler. One of the teams, which includes two students from CEGE (Isha Kularni and Amelie Chen, both in their 2nd year), were shortlisted to the national final round, where they presented their project to a panel of judges on the 20 of June in London. This was a fantastic achievement to have made it to the finals stage with strong competition from 6,000 students across 28 UK academic institutions. The winning team was awarded £2,000.

The team choose the theme of water, they have designed a solution for the water scarcity problems faced by the population of Kibera, where this year’s Challenge was based. It was quite an interesting experience approaching this topic from not just the technical point of view, but also prioritising socio-economic and sustainability considerations in the design process.

The interdisciplinary team brought together the disciplines of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering, bringing a range of perspectives to developing a solution. They developed a semi-centralised rainwater harvesting and purification system, which they will present at the finals.

Isha said “It was very satisfying to see how our skills came together and helped us design a complete engineering solution.”

Find out more about the Engineering for People Design Challenge 7th Year​. 

Find out more about UCL CEGE’s IEP Minor, Environmental Engineering Minor. You can watch a video of the minor here.

You might be interested in a related news, IEP Minor field trip to Surrey Docks Farm, April 2018.