A team of engineering students from the University of Warwick spent some of their time on Valentine’s Day this year taking part in an action-packed event aimed at helping school children fall in love with engineering.

The #inlovewithengineering event was attended by the University’s Warwick Sub team – a project team of final year engineering students who are working to design and build a race worthy human-powered submarine to compete in the European International Submarine Race in July 2014.

The event, which was organised by The Market Bosworth School, in conjunction with The Big Bang regional team, was attended by over 650 year 7 to 9 pupils and 100 primary school pupils from the Leicestershire area.

Margaret Low, Principal Teaching Fellow at WMG has received a highly commended certificate from STEMNET for her work promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects.

Margaret was nominated for the STEMNET Awards (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network) by colleagues who work with her across her activities.

Tariq El-Ayat from STEMNET added in his response:

We were hugely impressed by [Margaret’s] level of dedication in inspiring young people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. We greatly appreciate [Margaret’s] involvement in STEMNET’s programmes, and hope to hear more about activities in future."

Professor Christina Hughes, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education said:

I have been tremendously impressed by Margaret’s dedication to working with and promoting STEM Ambassadors to as wide an audience as possible, Margaret has not only engaged fully in new developments within the University of Warwick, she has also engaged with a range of external partners in ways that make a serious regional contribution to enhancing public understandings of STEM.”

Pupils from local schools have been taking part in a series of Royal Institution Engineering Masterclasses, hosted and delivered by staff and students from WMG and other Science departments at the University of Warwick.

Last weekend saw the end of the series, which concluded with an official presentation and awards ceremony for the children, attended by teachers and parents, to mark their participation in the series.

Year 9 students from several local schools have been attending regular Saturday morning masterclasses over a period of 6 weeks. The sessions were designed to spark their interest in a wide variety of engineering paths. Topics covered over the series included programming robots, understanding waves, intelligent vehicles and 3D printing.

Staff and students from WMG were part of a University of Warwick exhibition stand at the Big Bang Fair West Midlands, which took place at the Ricoh Arena earlier this week.

The Warwick stand, sponsored by the WMG centre HVM Catapult, brought together staff and students from six departments - WMG (including the WMG Academy), School of Engineering, Life Sciences, Physics, Computer Science and Maths and students from the Human Submarine Project, Engineering Society, Engineers Without Borders and the Technology Volunteers.

The Big Bang Fair provides the opportunity for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) community to come together to enthuse and inspire young people to think about future education and careers involving STEM subjects. Teams from Warwick attended the fair and demonstrated exciting activities such as 3D printing, playing with electronics and sensors (Institute of Digital Healthcare and Technology Volunteers) and the Human Submarine project, which is being undertaken for the first time this year by Engineering students at Warwick.

Everyone involved had a fantastic day at the event. Hundreds of school children from the local area visited our stand and took part in some of the activities and learnt about the range of opportunities available through STEM subjects. With a stand featuring so many Science Faculty departments, the University team were able to demonstrate the real variety available across the disciplines.

See more photos from the day...

As part of their support for the new WMG Academy for Young Engineers, engineering company Bosch helped Coventry and Buckinghamshire school children get a taste of the latest engineering technology at WMG at the University of Warwick.

The event, which took place on Tuesday 4 June, aimed to excite the interest of 10 to 12 year olds in a career in engineering – possibly with leading organisations such as Bosch as future potential employers.

The children from Joseph Cash and Coundon Court schools in Coventry and Carrington Junior School in Buckinghamshire got hands on experience with a robot search and rescue device, WMG’s 3D Virtual powerwall, sessions on how mobile phones work, and demonstrations of Additive Layer Manufacturing and Digital Healthcare technology.

Pupils from North Leamington School in Warwickshire have made it through to the national finals of the F1 in Schools competition for the second year running.

The team of six students spent six months designing and building a model Formula One car, which they raced at the regional competition at Aston University, finishing in second place (missing out on fastest car by 0.005 seconds!) The team also won the trophy for Best Engineered Car, sponsored by Jaguar Land Rover.

Dr Greg Gibbons, Senior Research Fellow at WMG, helped the team to manufacture the suspension and some aerofoil components using WMG's state-of-the-art 3D printing facilities.