Budding Perse engineers receive illustrious scholarships

Three Perse students have received sought-after Arkwright Scholarships after being identified as stars of the future in engineering.

Sai, Hercules and Jamie (all Lower Sixth) have gained the illustrious scholarships, which provide them with a chance to build connections within the industry as well as funding to support their engineering endeavours.

While in Year 11, they each submitted a detailed application highlighting their interest in engineering before taking part in an exam and an in-depth interview as part of the selection process.

All three showcased their ingenious GCSE design and technology (DT) coursework projects as part of their Arkwright applications.

Sai highlighted the firework safety system he had designed, in which the pyrotechnics are placed inside a container, where they would then be ignited. The system also featured an extinguishing mechanism in the event of any problems with the fireworks.

He said: “We had three different contexts we could choose from for our DT projects and one of those was celebrations and how we can enhance that experience.

“I’ve celebrated Diwali multiple times myself and we use a lot of fireworks, so I was just thinking in terms of safety and entertainment at the same time. I still made a few iterations after I submitted it because I was so enthusiastic about it.

“I really like solving problems using mechanical engineering systems. It’s quite an interesting field for me, so I found the whole iterative design process quite fun.

“I heard about the Arkwright Scholarship all the way back in Year 7 and it sounded great, so I was overjoyed to receive it.”

Sai, who is being supported by the RAF through the Arkwright Scholarship, is considering using his funding to build his own drone from scratch.

For his application, Hercules submitted not only his GCSE DT design for smart glasses, but also his plans for a gripper for a robotic arm.

He said: “With my smart glasses, the concept behind it was they had a screen that displayed useful information and recorded events so you could play them back afterwards.

“I was also doing research modelling the movement and degrees of freedom for a robotic arm, so I 3D-printed a monolithic compliant gripper design. It means it was printed as one piece, but it’s also a mechanism that bends and doesn’t have fixed joints.”

Hercules is being backed with mentoring and work experience from materials science research and technology company TWI.

“I’m very proud and very happy to have got the scholarship”, he said. “I think it’s strengthened my dedication because if it’s a process that takes several months, as this was, you must be consistent.

“Hopefully now with the work experience programmes, I can gain more practical skills related to the field.”

Jamie’s project focused on finding a solution to help prevent the elderly from slipping and falling on icy ground during the winter.

He said: “When I spoke to all my grandparents, one of whom was an engineer, they said walking outside during the winter was an issue, so I thought I’d would work on solving it.

“I made attachments that go on normal shoes which then allow them to have more grip in ice. What I did was look at crampons that climbers use and thought about how I could adapt them to work on pavements because the sharp spikes wouldn’t work on this surface.”

“I was very happy when I got the news about Arkwright. Particularly with the exam, I found the process of being given these real world problems to come up with a solution for very interesting.

Jamie is being supported by mechanical and hydraulic engineering firm Webtec Products, and like Sai, is also thinking of putting the funding he has received towards creating his own drone.