RAE honours engineers’ exceptional Covid work with special awards

President of the Royal Academy of Engineering Professor Sir Jim McDonald stated:

“The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest public health crisis of our time and has presented society with multiple challenges. Engineering expertise and innovation has been central to the global fight to save lives and protect livelihoods. 

“I am also incredibly proud of engineers everywhere who have worked round the clock to maintain essential services, critical supply chains and infrastructure in unprecedented circumstances, using their training and skills to find innovative solutions to a host of problems and to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on our daily lives.”

The awards have been made from among those across all technical specialities, disciplines and career stages within the UK engineering community who have contributed to addressing the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specially commissioned silver medals will be presented to all winners later this year.

The full list of winners includes:

• Ventilator Challenge UK Consortium, whose Dick Elsy led the initiative to combine the knowledge and skills of 33 UK technology and engineering businesses across the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors, to produce more than 13,000 Smiths and Penlon ventilator devices for the NHS. 
• University College London-Ventura CPAP breathing aids: developed by a team led by Professor Rebecca Shipley and Professor Tim Baker working with Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains. The team manufactured 10,000 breathing aids for use in UK hospitals and shared the designs with organisations from 105 other countries at no cost.
• University of Cambridge Open Ventilator Systsem Initiative led by Dr Tashiv Ramsander developed a high-performance ventilator for manufacture in low and middle-income countries that became the first intensive care quality ventilator to be manufactured in Africa.
• University of Southampton PeRSo: The engineering team developed the Personal Respirator Southampton, a respirator for healthcare workers providing a much higher level of protection than surgical masks.
• Babcock International Group Plc for the rapid development and manufacture of a new medical ventilator product, Zephyr Plus, coordinated across several major companies in the UK and Germany, with 39 suppliers and MoD logistics. 
• Jean Morris and National Physical Laboratory (NPL) young engineers took a central role in building and testing prototype ventilators against a developing MHRA specification.
• Dr Anthony Robotham at Plymouth University who designed an environmentally friendly face shield, manufactured from recycled materials that are compostable or recyclable at the end of life.
• Cardiology registrar Dr Dominic Pimenta led the design and manufacture of face shields with the team at Makerversity for frontline NHS and care home staff. His charity, HEROES, has produced 100,000 reusable face shields as well as thousands of reusable gowns and scrubs.
• Cambridge University Institute for Manufacturing:The IfM team helped local hospitals to make the best use of their resources, streamlining logistics for sourcing and storing vital PPE, informing decision-making on emergency demand, and developing a ventilator sharing system to be used in emergencies. 
• Tharsus for Bump distancing system: Led by CEO Brian Palmer FREng and CTO Dave Swan, the technology’s smart data insights inform rapid decision making, allowing employers to maximise workplace capacity and providing data on team contact in the event of an outbreak.
• Doctors Ravi Solanki and Raymond Siems, working for the charity HEROES. In less than two days, their team turned an idea into a platform with genuine impact: a secure website through which more than 543,000 items of much-needed support have been provided to NHS workers, from sustainable PPE to counselling services and child care.
• Professor Chris Toumazou of Imperial College London for developing a rapid, affordable COVID-19 test based on a lab in a cartridge technology that provides test results in just over an hour. A total of 5.8 million tests are now being deployed throughout NHS in preparation for the flu season. 
• Professor Zhangfeng and his Oxford University team for the Oxford rapid viral RNA test for COVID-19. It can detect SARS-CoV-2 infection in 30 minutes and could be invaluable in developing countries because no specialist equipment is needed.
• Professor Harris Makatsoris, King’s College London for developing ‘factory in a a box’ that allows the rapid manufacture of synthetic RNA vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and minimises the space required for high-volume vaccine production.
• Professor Catherine Noakes, Leeds University for her role in advising the NHS and the government at the highest level during the pandemic, shaping life-saving guidance based on her expertise in environmental and engineering controls.
• Exeter University Sewers4COVID team led by Professor Dragan Savic FREng applied machine learning to sewer epidemiology to estimate the number of infected people in a certain geographical area to track the spread of infection.
• BOC Customer Engineering Services who maintained the oxygen supplies to treat COVID-19 patients across the UK. BOC engineers set up oxygen systems at six Nightingale centres, including the largest medical oxygen system ever installed.
• Teledyne-e2v’s Matt Benson, Elliot Dervish and Jonathan Parker, who developed and manufactured the Handy Hook for front line NHS staff across Essex and London, to limit their interaction with surfaces carrying the virus. 
• Mott MacDonald’s Martyn Frackelton and Ian Watkins, who project managed both NHS Nightingale London and NHS Nightingale North West, enabling the massive field hospitals to care for patients within two weeks of being announced.

Chair of the Academy’s Awards Committee, Professor Raffaella Ocone added that engineering skills proved to be of vital importance during the current pandemic, a fact reflected in the breadth of nominations for the awards. 

“While I am delighted that we are able to recognise some of these outstanding achievements with these awards I am mindful that the important work of the vast majority of engineers will remain largely outside the public’s consciousness. They are all deserving of our thanks and admiration for their continuing positive contribution to society,” she remarked.

Photo: Award winner Jean Morris of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) with team member Arthur View