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EngD students win "Dragons Den style" Engineering Competition

A consortium of Engineering Doctorate students won first place – and a prize of £2,000 – at the 2011 Engineering YES competition, where students were asked to pitch business proposals to a panel of industry experts.

The winning team: (from left to right) Jonathan, Abdul, Martin and Michael receive their cheque from Graham Hopkins, Director of Engineering and Technology at Rolls Royce, who sat on the panel of judges.

The competition, organised by the University of Loughborough, has been running for three years.  Entrants have to work against the clock to formulate a business plan based on an engineering idea that is “novel in nature but obeys the laws of thermodynamics”.

Team Pinnacle consisted of team captain Michael Conti-Ramsden, Abdul Al-Rawi, and Martin Goodfellow – all from the University of Manchester – as well as Jonathan Squire from the University of Sheffield.

Their winning idea was a hypothetical carbon cleaning system they called “Actinode”, which was able to remove and destroy organic contaminants in water.

The team members’ specialist areas cover manufacturing and nuclear engineering. They met during their shared Enterprise modules (which is part of the EngD degree’s taught component), where they learnt how to present business ideas, respond to critical questioning, and apply their research in a commercial setting.

The panel grill Pinnacle over the feasibility of their business proposal.

Team captain Michael took inspiration for the group’s winning idea from research he is undertaking with Arvia, the University spin-out company that sponsors his Engineering Doctorate studies.  

The team had to put their proposal together in the first two-and-a-half days of the initial three-day heat, which involved working late into the night to get their pitch prepared.

Michael, 25, said: "Winning was great; it is really good for our CVs and everyone who took part came away with a better understanding of what they were doing.

"We agreed that the best way to approach the task was to look at what the judging panel as potential investors would want to see and work backwards. We discussed our ideas and decided since I was working in the water sector and had a good understanding of the market it would be a relatively easy job to identify how to get the information we needed."

Team mate, Abdul, 25, described the experience of winning the EngineeringYES competition as "amazing".

He added: "The hardest aspect was working under pressure; it gave it that sort of real life experience. When we would disagree, late at night, it would get really intense. You have to trust in other peoples ideas, even if they’re not your own."

Michael and his team presented a professional front under tough interrogation; he attributed their success to hard work and preparation.

Dr Robert Phillips delivers the enterprise module on the EngD course and provided the £750 sponsorship each student needed to enter.

He said: "Employers are often that concerned that research students, while having a good knowledge of their field, are less able to apply their understanding in a commercial environment where research projects must lead to a commercially viable product.

"The Enterprise modules on the EngD cover many of the essential elements of a business plan, like defining your market, external drivers, and financial viability.”

Jo Gillman, who co-ordinates the competition at Loughborough University said: "The great thing about the competition is its experiential nature.

"They come with a set of ideas, then sessions with industry and business professionals deliver information that teams use to reassess their strategies. The industry input makes the whole experience as ‘real’ as possible".

For more information about the competition please visit the EngineeringYES homepage