Jennifer Olsen was announced as the winner of the Talent 2030 National Engineering Competition for Girls for her project where she sought to develop cost effective ways of producing 3D printed prosthetic limbs.
Jenny, who studies A Level Maths, Biology and Chemistry at Newcastle Sixth Form College, a division of NCG, beat off stiff competition from students at other schools and colleges across the country.
Talent 2030
Run by the National Centre for Universities and Business, Talent 2030 is an ambitious campaign to bring female talent into engineering and manufacturing industries. The competition, which is sponsored by Rolls-Royce, EDF Energy, PepsiCo and Centrica, asks girls to explore engineering solutions to twenty-first century problems.
The 2015 Annual Dashboard of Statistics shows a downward trend in female uptake of engineering education which will lead to a shortage of 10,000 engineering and technology undergraduates by 2030.
Jenny said:
“I feel really happy to have won this award. I'm so grateful for Talent 2030 running the competition as I would never have had this amazing opportunity to exhibit my project at the Big Bang Fair or to have my work judged by Lindsay Dobson, R&D Manager Global Functions at PepsiCo and Carol Monaghan, MP for Glasgow Northwest.
“I felt honoured that they found my project interesting and selected me as the winner.”
Awarding prizes of £1,000 and a mentor for winners and £100 for runners-up, the competition also invites all shortlisted entrants to the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham on 19 March, to exhibit their ideas and receive their certificates and prizes.
As a result of Jenny’s success, Newcastle Sixth Form College will receive £500 towards purchasing new science equipment, an amount which the college is matching to purchase a new 3D digital printer.
Gerard Garvey, Principal of Newcastle Sixth Form College, hopes that Jenny’s success will help inspire other students to follow in her footsteps:
“I want to congratulate Jenny on her fantastic achievement in the in the Talent 2030 National Engineering Competition. To win such a prestigious national award is testament to the hard work Jenny puts into everything she does.
Her teachers and I are thrilled with her success and I hope that our current and future students will be inspired by her achievements.”
