UCL MechEng Students Win at IMechE Design Challenge Regional Final

It was a UCL “one, two finish” at the IMechE Design Challenge as, after an exciting virtual competition, both UCL Mechanical Engineering teams topped the leaderboard in the Greater London Regional Final held recently. The groups representing UCL, Team Analogue and Team InTHREADibles, excelled in a day that featured design presentations, Q&A from industry experts, and tense virtual side-by-side racing between university teams from Greater London.

Overall winners Team Analogue will now go on to represent the department and region while competing for the national title later this year.

Flushed with his team’s victory, George Stonor (Team Analogue and first-year UCL Mechanical Engineering student) said, “The event was very enjoyable. We learnt a lot from the design Q&A and watching the virtual racing was full of suspense.”

Like much else, this year’s design challenge had to adapt to a COVID-compliant delivery. This meant UCL’s teams had to collaborate across continents without access to the Department’s teaching workshop, MechSpace. Despite collaborating and competing in virtual environments the annual design challenge, hosted by the discipline’s leading institution IMechE, clearly proved a useful learning experience for the students involved.

“The students made the most of the advice given by the external guests brought weekly as part of their professional skills module, to get the audience’s interest in their devices and understanding of why they deserved to be at the top of the leader board,” said Dr Nelia Jurado, part of the first year Design and Professional Skills teaching team.

The positions achieved by both UCL teams shows also how they listened and implemented the feedback given by the industrial experts during their review panels: improving their devices’ designs and performance. It is great to see how they have put into practice all the stages of the design cycle they were taught about and shined!”

“The Design Challenge is a fantastic chance for our students to put their engineering theory to the test with a ‘real-world’ design and build project. Student enthusiasm has been amazing, and despite online-only teaching it was inspiring to see prototypes being tested on kitchen tables.” Said Dr Tom Peach, part of the first-year Design and Professional Skills teaching team.

Congratulations again to both teams!

First place (now competing in the National Final): Team Analogue
Raphael Bouchet, Emanuel Ciudin, Francisco Papadopulos, George Stonor & Laurence Vines

Second place: Team InTHREADibles
Zarina Ivanova, Marwan Mohamed, Seif Rashad, Ibrahim Saeed & Wiaam Saeed

More information on the IMechE Design Challenge is available here.