MacRobert Award for Engineering 2024
The Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award is the premier prize for UK innovation in engineering. It seeks to demonstrate the importance of engineering and the role of engineers and scientists in contributing to national prosperity and international prestige. It is awarded annually for an outstanding example of innovation and benefit to the community, which has also achieved commercial success. Each year the winning team receives a gold medal, widespread publicity, a £50,000 prize and an exclusive weekend away at Douneside House.
Originally founded by the MacRobert Trust, the Award is now presented and run by the Royal Academy of Engineering. The Engineers Trust is supporting the Award with £20,000 annually for 10 years.
Selected by a judging panel of esteemed engineering experts, the 2024 MacRobert Award winner is:
Google DeepMind: A step change in weather forecasting
Google DeepMind’s GraphCast weather forecasting technology, could help mitigate the impacts of severe weather events, optimise resource allocation, and support critical decision-making across various industries.
Google DeepMind’s innovation represents a revolution in weather forecasting, using machine-learning instead of traditional numerical weather prediction methodologies. The AI-powered tool uses cutting-edge machine learning algorithms and vast data sets to give highly accurate and timely weather predictions up to ten days in advance. The model currently takes just 45 seconds to generate a forecast that would take more traditional forecasting methods over an hour on a supercomputer; a developmental leap that has advanced weather forecasting significantly.
The other 2024 MacRobert Award finalists are:
Sunamp: Transforming energy storage to combat climate change
Sunamp has pioneered the development of innovative heat batteries utilising phase change materials to revolutionise thermal energy storage. These advanced batteries store and release large amounts of thermal energy through the melting and solidifying of the specially developed phase change materials, providing a highly efficient and sustainable solution for heating and cooling applications. Current products provide heat storage for domestic hot water that are more space efficient and energy efficient than traditional hot water cylinders.
University of Oxford, AstraZeneca and partners: Scale up and manufacture of ChAdOx1 Covid vaccine
The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca led a consortium of manufacturers, suppliers and other partners in the development of an innovative manufacturing process that was rolled out globally to supply over 3 billion doses of the ChAdOx1 Covid vaccine, saving over 6 million lives.
Royal Academy of Engineering Announcement
The Worshipful Company of Engineers Charitable Trust (the Engineers Trust) acknowledges excellence in engineering, supports engineering education and research, gives grants and assists in the relief of poverty.
